In the vast, inky blackness beyond our solar system, objects are hurtling through space, each carrying secrets from another star. When one of these interstellar travellers, dubbed 3I/ATLAS, was first spotted in July 2025 by the NASA-funded ATLAS survey telescope — making it only the third known interstellar body discovered, after 1I/'Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov — it immediately drew the world's attention. But it's not the visitor's cosmic origins that are making headlines now; it's the bizarre, backward-flying tail that continues to defy conventional physics and has astronomers scratching their heads.
The mystery was compounded when the Hubble Space Telescope confirmed the strange activity, capturing images that showed the comet travelling at an astounding 137,000 miles per hour.
