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The recently discovered interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS may be one of the oldest comets ever seen by humanity.

The object was already exciting to astronomers as only the third space object seen entering the solar system from beyond its limits, the other two being 1I/’Oumuamua seen in 2017 and 2I/Borisov detected in 2019.

A mystery interstellar object spotted last week by astronomers could be the oldest comet ever seen, according to scientists.

Named 3I/Atlas, it may be three billion years older than our own solar system, suggests the team from Oxford university.

It is only the third time we have detected an object that has come from beyond our solar system.

The preliminary findings were presented on Friday at the national meeting of the UK’s Royal Astronomical Society in Durham.

“We’re all very excited by 3I/Atlas,” University of Oxford astronomer Matthew Hopkins told BBC News. He had just finished his PhD studies when the object was discovered.

He says it could be more than seven billion years old, and it may be the most remarkable interstellar visitor yet.

3I/Atlas was first spotted on 1 July 2025 by the ATLAS survey telescope in Chile, when it was about 670 million km from the Sun.

Since then astronomers around the world have been racing to identify its path and discover more details about it.

Mr Hopkins believes it originated in the Milky Way’s ‘thick disk’. This is a group of ancient stars that orbit above and below the area where the Sun and most stars are located.

The team believe that because 3I/ATLAS probably formed around an old star, it is made up of a lot of water ice.

That means that as it approaches the Sun later this year, the energy from the Sun will heat the object’s surface, leading to blazes of vapour and dust.

That could create a glowing tail.

The researchers made their findings using a model developed by Mr Hopkins.

“This is an object from a part of the galaxy we’ve never seen up close before,” said Professor Chris Lintott, co-author of the study.

“We think there’s a two-thirds chance this comet is older than the solar system, and that it’s been drifting through interstellar space ever since.”

Later this year, 3I/ATLAS should be visible from Earth using amateur telescopes.

Before 3I/Atlas soared into view, just two others had been seen. One was called 1I/’Oumuamua, found in 2017 and another called 2I/Borisov, discovered in 2019.

Astronomers globally are currently gearing up to start using a new, very powerful telescope in Chile, called the Vera C Rubin.

When it starts fully surveying the southern night sky later this year, scientists expect that it could discover between 5 and 50 new interstellar objects.

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In a world-first pilot study, researchers from the University of South Australia (UniSA) have used video footage of insects to extract their heart rates without touching or disturbing them.

The innovation, published in the Archives of Insect Biochemistry and Physiology, could transform how scientists monitor the health and stress levels of arthropods, that account for more than 80% of animal species.

Taking footage from smartphones, social media videos and digital cameras, the researchers used sophisticated signal processing methods to monitor the heart activity of ants, bees, caterpillars, spiders, grasshoppers and stick insects.

Unlike mammals, arthropods have an open circulatory system in which blood fills the body cavity, bathing the internal organs and tissues. Their heart is located on the top (dorsal) side of their body in the abdomen.

Led by UniSA PhD candidate Danyi Wang and her supervisor Professor Javaan Chahl, the study demonstrates that subtle body movements captured on standard digital or smartphone cameras can be analyzed to reveal accurate and detailed cardiac activity in a range of insect species.

Unlike traditional methods that require physical contact or immobilization, this technique allows insects to remain free, without disrupting their natural behavior.

“Insects are vital to our ecosystems, and understanding their physiological responses to environmental change is essential,” Wang says.

“Existing methods to measure insect’ vital signs are invasive, however. Our method preserves their natural behavior while providing accurate insights into their heart activity.”

The extracted heart rates closely matched the physiological ranges recorded via traditional techniques, validating the system’s accuracy.

Senior author Prof Javaan Chahl says the system successfully captured heart rates across multiple insect species, detecting physiological differences influenced by factors such as wing morphology and temperature.

“What’s exciting is that this was all achieved without attaching sensors or disturbing the insects in any way.”

One of the most impressive validations came from caterpillar recordings, where the team compared their video-derived cardiac signals to data from infrared contact sensors in previous studies. The shapes and frequencies were almost identical.

The study also revealed interesting inter-species variations. For example, spider heart rates varied significantly, reflecting differences between species rather than activity levels, since all subjects were at rest during filming.

Advanced image processing techniques, including motion tracking algorithms and magnification, were applied to detect tiny movements associated with heartbeats. These signals were analyzed using spectral filtering and transformed into frequency data to isolate the heart rate.

According to Prof Chahl, the study marks an important step forward in insect research.

“Non-invasive cardiac monitoring offers tremendous potential; not just for studying insect health, but also for understanding environmental stressors, pesticide effects, or even the wellbeing of social insects like ants and bees, where heart signals can provide insights into colony health and behavior.”

His team has previously used a similar technique with digital cameras to remotely extract cardiac signals in humans and wildlife.

The researchers hope to test the system in the field and refine it by using machine learning to improve the accuracy across different body types and light conditions.

“With more refinement, this could become a cost effective and valuable tool in the ecological research toolkit,” says Wang. “It gives us the ability to listen to the hearts of the smallest creatures without harming them.”

Reference: Wang D, Chahl J. Extracting cardiac activity for arthropods using digital cameras: Insights from a pilot study. Insect Biochem Physio. 2025. Doi: 10.1002/arch.70076

 

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In 2022, NASA rammed a spacecraft into an asteroid to see if it could alter its orbital period around its parent asteroid. The mission, dubbed the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), aimed to determine whether humanity could theoretically save itself from a catastrophic asteroid impact.

DART collided with Dimorphos, a small moonlet orbiting a larger asteroid called Didymos, on September 26, 2022. The results of the impact blew NASA’s expectations out of the water, shortening Dimorphos’s orbital period by 32 minutes. Such a change would be more than enough to deflect a dangerous asteroid away from Earth, indicating that this strategy—the kinetic impactor technique—could save us if necessary. New research, however, complicates this success story. An investigation into the debris DART left behind suggests this technique, when applied to planetary defense, isn’t as straightforward as scientists initially thought.

“We succeeded in deflecting an asteroid, moving it from its orbit,” said study lead author Tony Farnham, a research astronomer at the University of Maryland, in a statement. “Our research shows that while the direct impact of the DART spacecraft caused this change, the boulders ejected gave an additional kick that was almost as big. That additional factor changes the physics we need to consider when planning these types of missions.” Farnham and his colleagues published their findings in The Planetary Science Journal on July 4.

Dimorphos is a “rubble pile” asteroid, a loose conglomeration of material such as rocks, pebbles, and boulders held together by gravity. This study only applies to this type of asteroid. Had DART collided with a more coherent, solid body, the impact wouldn’t have produced these bizarre effects. Still, there are plenty of other rubble pile asteroids in the galaxy, so understanding how they respond to the kinetic impactor technique is important.

The researchers analyzed images taken by LICIACube, an Italian Space Agency satellite that was mounted on the DART spacecraft. About two weeks before the impact, LICIACube separated and began following about three minutes behind the spacecraft, allowing the satellite to beam images of the collision and its effects back to Earth. In addition to observing the crater DART punched into the surface of Dimorphos, LICIACube captured the ejecta plume, or the cloud of debris ejected from the asteroid when DART hit it.

These images allowed Farnham and his colleagues to track 104 boulders ranging from 1.3 to 23.6 feet (0.4 to 7.2 meters) wide. The rocks shot away from the asteroid at speeds up to 116 miles per hour (187 kilometers per hour). Strangely, the distribution of this ejected debris was not random, defying the researchers’ expectations.

“We saw that the boulders weren’t scattered randomly in space,” Farnham said. “Instead, they were clustered in two pretty distinct groups, with an absence of material elsewhere, which means that something unknown is at work here.”

The larger of the two clusters, which contained 70% of the debris, shot southward away from the asteroid at high speeds and shallow angles. The researchers believe these objects came from a specific source on Dimorphos—perhaps two large boulders called Atabaque and Bodhran that shattered when DART’s solar panels slammed into them moments before the main body of the spacecraft hit.

When the team compared this outcome to that of NASA’s Deep Impact (EPOXI) mission, which punched a probe into a comet to study its interior structure, the distribution of the debris made more sense. Whereas Deep Impact hit a surface made up of very small, uniform particles, DART hit a rocky surface packed with large boulders. This “resulted in chaotic and filamentary structures in its ejecta patterns,” coauthor Jessica Sunshine, a professor of astronomy and geology at the University of Maryland who served as principal investigator for Deep Impact, explained in the statement.

“Comparing these two missions side-by-side gives us this insight into how different types of celestial bodies respond to impacts, which is crucial to ensuring that a planetary defense mission is successful,” she said.

The 104 ejected boulders carried a total kinetic energy equal to 1.4% of the energy of the DART spacecraft, and 96% of that energy was directed to the south, representing “significant momentum contributions that were not accounted for in the orbital period measurements,” the researchers state in their report. The force of debris exploding away from Dimorphos upon DART’s impact could have tilted the asteroid’s orbital plane by up to one degree, potentially causing it to tumble erratically in space.

“Thus, a full accounting of the momentum in all directions and understanding the role played by surface boulders will provide better knowledge of how the specifics of the impact could alter—either reducing or enhancing—the effects of a kinetic impactor,” the researchers write.

Astronomers have catalogued roughly 2,500 potentially hazardous asteroids in our corner of the galaxy. These are space rocks that can come alarmingly close to Earth and are large enough to cause significant damage upon impact. While there is currently no known risk of one of these asteroids hitting our planet within the next century, developing strategies to prevent such a catastrophe could someday prove lifesaving. The success of the DART mission suggests that NASA is on the right track, but this new study shows we still have much to learn about the effects of the kinetic impactor technique.