An interstellar “bomb” rushes towards the sun at more than 60 km per second!

And a third! If as many people think, a11pl3z of its temporary designation, comes well from the outside of the solar system, it will only be the third of this rare category to be confirmed.

The object has such speed and trajectory that he cannot come from Oort cloudthe distant comet reservoir which encompasses the solar system: it therefore comes from outside. In any case, such a speed, five times faster than a Falcon Heavy or a Saturn V is sufficient to escape the gravitational attraction of the sun: A11PL3Z is therefore not linked to our star.

This type of trajectory with a speed greater than 40 km/s is called “hyperbolic”.

The rare object from another stellar system has been identified recently, between June 25 and 29 by the ATLA ATLAS, partly funded by NASA, which is a system of monitoring asteroids and comets which could present a risk of impact with the earth. Fortunately, here, the planetary defense will not have to be activated because A11PL3Z presents no risk of collisional trajectory with us.

It is either a comet or an asteroid, or even a fragment of a planet.

An almost straight trajectory: it comes from elsewhere

This may seem strange to the uninitiated, but the speed alone and the trajectory allow with a confidence rate of around 100% to determine that a visitor comes or not from the solar system since everything is in orbit around the sun: with A11PL3z the doubt is not allowed. The evaluations give it about 10 to 20 km in diameter, which in its low range corresponds to the diameter of the meteorite of the chixculub whose dinosaurs benefited well in their time.

Currently, our distant visitor is between the orbit of Jupiter and Mars. No risk of collision with the planets is envisaged according to measures and projections.

Unfortunately, he goes far too fast to try to send a probe to meet him (around 240,000 km/h!). In about four months, he will spend around the sun to leave as he had come, taking with him knowledge treasures and mysteries about a different stellar system from ours …