The interstellar object 3I/ATLAS, which NASA clearly described as a comet, still sparks intense debate among astronomers due to its unusual "anti-tail" pointing toward the Sun.

Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb suggests this feature might not be a typical comet tail, but rather a swarm of solid objects accompanying 3I/ATLAS.

While writing a new Medium blog post, Loeb said that the post-perihelion images of the interstellar object showed a tear-drop shape of its coma with an extension by about an arcminute towards the Sun, with the JPL Horizons reporting a non-gravitational acceleration during the same period.

He suggested that this unusual anti-tail could be comprised of a swarm of non-evaporating objects, unlike typical comet tails composed of gas and dust.

Loeb proposes that these objects don't experience the same non-gravitational acceleration as 3I/ATLAS, causing them to appear closer to the Sun.

"If 3I/ATLAS is surrounded by a swarm of objects that do not share its non-gravitational acceleration, then these objects will tend to be closer to the Sun relative to 3I/ATLAS, because 3I/ATLAS is pushed away from the Sun relative to the objects through its non-gravitational acceleration," he wrote.

Source:Ndtv