00:002 billion people will be able to watch an asteroid the size of a skyscraper slide past Earth closer than
00:07many satellites.
00:08It's scheduled to happen in April 2029.
00:11Now, an asteroid of this size comes this close to our planet just once in 7,500 years.
00:18And it has to do with a strange interstellar visitor called 3i Atlas that recently shook scientific certainty.
00:25Here's how.
00:26The Atlas Survey System, a nickname for Asteroid Terrestrial Impact Last Alert System, that's a mouthful.
00:34Well, it scans the sky every night looking for objects that might threaten Earth.
00:38When it first flagged 3i Atlas in 2025, it appeared as a faint smudge in telescope data.
00:45The kind of thing astronomers almost ignore because the sky is full of harmless junk.
00:50Then, scientists calculated its speed and direction and realized something was off.
00:56It wasn't bound to the sun like most comets and asteroids.
01:00Space objects usually follow clean curves dictated by gravity and sunlight.
01:05Sunlight heats a comet.
01:07Ice turns to gas.
01:08Gas escapes.
01:10Hey, I know all about that.
01:11And that tiny push slightly alters its path, like a slow leak nudging a balloon.
01:173i Atlas didn't just nudge, it lurched.
01:20It accelerated in ways that didn't line up neatly with heating models.
01:24It was moving too fast, on a path that screamed interstellar origin.
01:29Which means it came from another star system entirely.
01:33It shifted direction slightly but persistently.
01:36That kind of motion means our models weren't telling the full story.
01:41Researchers figured out the object's structure must be unusual, like a fragile pile of rubble venting gas from unexpected pockets.
01:49It was also possible that its surface chemistry reacted differently to sunlight than anything we've seen before.
01:56And, maybe, it meant that tiny forces scientists usually ignored actually matter more than they thought.
02:03NASA and the ESA both emphasized that this thing, I'll just call it 3i, wasn't an extraterrestrial spacecraft, unlike what
02:12the internet crowd supposed.
02:14It sent no signals.
02:15There was no propulsion or artificial materials involved.
02:19Just ice and dust.
02:20Nobody feared 3i would hit Earth.
02:23That part was clear.
02:24But they worried they wouldn't be able to predict its behavior.
02:27Space safety depends on knowing where things will be tomorrow, next year, and decades from now.
02:343i showed that even small bodies can act like trick coins instead of clean equations.
02:40And this knowledge is important to predict the behavior of our today's featured thingamabob, the asteroid Apophis.
02:48Goddess nickname after the Egyptian deity of chaos, which is a bit worrying already.
02:53This bad boy will pass less than 20,000 miles away from Earth.
02:58Sounds like it's no biggie, but that is closer to our planet than the satellites that handle weather forecasting and
03:04global communications.
03:06Around 2 billion people living all over Africa and in Western Europe will be able to see it with their
03:12unaided eyes.
03:13Earth's gravity at that distance won't just wave hello.
03:16It will grab Apophis hard enough to potentially change its spin, crack its surface, or shift its internal structure.
03:24Scientists call these tidal forces.
03:27Think of it like squeezing a stress ball.
03:29You don't break it, but you don't leave it unchanged either.
03:33Now, before scientists studied 3i Atlas in detail, Apophis felt manageable, and its orbit looked pretty stable.
03:41Its flyby was supposed to be a controlled event.
03:43But when they learned more about 3i Atlas, scientists started framing 2029 differently.
03:50Not as danger, but as a stress test.
03:53If Earth's gravity nudges Apophis even slightly, models need to capture that in real time.
03:59That's why the European and Japanese space agencies developed the Ramses mission.
04:04It's a spacecraft packed with instruments and a Swiss-built high-resolution camera that will observe Apophis up close during
04:12the encounter.
04:12They want to see ruptures forming, dust shifting, spin rates changing.
04:17It's basically the asteroid equivalent of a human heart monitor.
04:21Now, the good news is that Apophis won't hit Earth in 2029.
04:25And scientists say that clearly.
04:28But safety depends on predictability.
04:30And predictability took a hit when 3i Atlas misbehaved.
04:34So, the scientists are now watching Apophis closely to test their assumptions in the safest way possible,
04:40with a known object, a known time, and every telescope pointed straight at it.
04:46Of course, they didn't take their eyes off 3i Atlas either.
04:50One of NASA's newest spacecraft, Europa Clipper, is cruising toward Jupiter right now, with a long trip ahead of it.
04:57On the way, scientists realized they had a perfect chance to point their instruments at this interstellar comet.
05:04From about 102 million miles away, Europa Clipper turned its camera and watched 3i Atlas drift by.
05:11What it captured isn't something your eyes could ever see.
05:15The image came from an ultraviolet instrument designed to study Jupiter's icy moons, not comets.
05:21And it observed 3i Atlas for seven straight hours.
05:24Ultraviolet light reveals gases and elements that stay completely invisible in normal photos.
05:30It's a way for scientists to see the comet's chemistry in action, instead of just its shape.
05:35That glowing cloud around the comet, called the coma, tells us what's escaping from the ice as sunlight hits it.
05:43By studying how those gases spread and move, scientists can learn what 3i Atlas is made of and how active
05:50it really is.
05:51Now, so far, scientists have had a chance to find some pretty unusual things about its chemistry.
05:57Radio telescopes in the Atakama Desert locked onto the comet and picked up clear signals from methanol and hydrogen cyanide.
06:05These two molecules, that sound boring and somewhat deadly, until you realize they sit right at the entrance ramp to
06:12life chemistry.
06:13These weren't tiny traces, either.
06:163i Atlas pumped out methanol at levels that jumped sharply as it approached the Sun.
06:21They spiked right where water ice starts to vaporize.
06:25Compared to most comets humans have ever measured, this thing came loaded.
06:30Its methanol-to-hydrogen cyanide ratio landed among the most enriched values ever seen.
06:36This doesn't mean that 3i Atlas carries life, or bacteria, or anything even remotely alive.
06:42But these molecules matter, because chemistry doesn't jump straight from rock to organism.
06:48Life, at least the kind we understand, builds itself step by step.
06:53Hydrogen cyanide plays a key role in forming amino acids, the Lego bricks of proteins.
06:59Methanol acts like a chemical multi-tool that helps assemble more complex molecules, like sugars, and the precursors to DNA
07:08and RNA.
07:09On 3i Atlas, methanol made up about 8% of its vapor, and that's roughly 4 times what we usually
07:16see in solar system comets.
07:18Another cool part is where these ingredients for life came from.
07:223i Atlas formed around another star, inside another planetary system, under conditions we can only guess at.
07:30And yet, it shows up carrying the same basic toolkit that life on Earth relies on.
07:36That lines up with an old idea scientists have kicked around for decades.
07:41Comets and asteroids might act like delivery trucks, scattering water and organic molecules across young planets.
07:48Earth may not have invented its chemistry from scratch.
07:51It may have inherited it.
07:54Now, before 3i Atlas, we had only confirmed two interstellar visitors, Amuamua in 2017, and 2i Borisov in 2019.
08:04Amuamua freaked everyone out because it didn't look like a normal comet at all.
08:09It had no obvious tail, showed weird exhilaration, and was of a cigar-like shape.
08:15So the internet went wild with crazy extraterrestrial theories.
08:19Borisov felt like a relief by comparison.
08:22It behaved exactly how a comet should, growing a coma, releasing gas, and cruising through the solar system without drama.
08:30Some people feared Borisov could collide with Earth or disrupt planetary orbits.
08:35But it flew by smoothly, boring even, like a guest who followed every house rule.
08:41Borisov reassured scientists that interstellar objects could be predictable.
08:463i Atlas shattered that calm, and showed us they could quietly undermine confidence without causing harm.
08:54Apophis now stands as the ultimate test run.
08:57Scientists already know it won't hurt us, but then again, the examples of interstellar visitors show how little we actually
09:04know about them.
09:05It indicates that space has its own, mostly unknown rules, is highly hostile to human life, and it's not very
09:13polite either.
09:14It doesn't announce surprises in advance.
09:16And the better we know about it, the better we can be prepared for these surprises.
09:24That's it for today.
09:25So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
09:30Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side.
09:34Let's continue.
09:34You
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