The Latest Breaking News from our Solar System

As interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS hurtles toward the Sun this week, astronomers brace for a once-in-a-lifetime cosmic event that could reveal whether the mysterious visitor from beyond our Solar System will survive, explode, or rewrite what we know about interstellar space.

While most scientists believe it’s a natural comet, one Harvard astronomer has suggested its unusual features could hint at signs of alien technology.

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, or C/2025 N1, is baffling scientists with its carbon-rich chemistry, early water release, and traces of metal emissions near the Sun.

On October 6 1995, at a scientific meeting in Florence, Italy, two Swiss astronomers made an announcement that would transform our understanding of the universe beyond our solar system. Michel Mayor and his PhD student Didier Queloz, working at the University of Geneva, announced they had detected a planet orbiting…

IN FULL

On July 1, astronomers spotted an unusual high-speed object zooming towards the Sun. Dubbed 3I/ATLAS, the surprising space traveller had one very special quality: its orbit showed it had come from outside our Solar System.

This week, astronomers spotted the third known interstellar visitor to our Solar System.

An object that appears to be from beyond our Solar System has been spotted hurtling towards the Sun, which if confirmed would be the third visitor from the stars ever detected, the European Space Agency said Wednesday.

In 2017, NASA discovered and later confirmed the first interstellar object to enter our Solar System.

In the outer reaches of our Solar System, 5.7 billion kilometres from the Sun, lies the dwarf planet Pluto. Smaller than Australia, it is an icy world of mountains, glaciers and craters where the average temperature is –232°C.

Apart from the Sun, its planets and their moons, our Solar System has vast amounts of space rocks – fragments left over from the formation of the inner planets.