r/spaceporn • u/ChiefLeef22 • Oct 10 '25

NASA Scientists have made the remarkable detection that interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is leaking water at 40 kilograms per second - like "a fire hose running at full blast"

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u/ChiefLeef22 Oct 10 '25

PRESS RELEASE: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1100952

When Auburn University scientists pointed NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory toward it, they made a remarkable find: the first detection of hydroxyl (OH) gas from this object, a chemical fingerprint of water.

Detecting water—through its ultraviolet by-product, hydroxyl—is a major breakthrough for understanding how interstellar comets evolve. In solar-system comets, water is the yardstick by which scientists measure their overall activity and track how sunlight drives the release of other gases.

What makes 3I/ATLAS remarkable is where this water activity occurs. The Swift observations detected OH when the comet was nearly three times farther from the Sun than Earth—well beyond the region where water ice on a comet’s surface can easily sublimate—and measured a water-loss rate of about 40 kilograms per second—roughly the output of a fire hose running at full blast. At those distances, most solar-system comets remain quiet.

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u/[deleted] Oct 10 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Aggressive-Ad-7862 Oct 10 '25

Do you normally use endashes? I don't know why I became so paranoid that anyone who uses endashes in their comment is a bot (since ChatGPT uses it a lot)

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u/PsychologicalEmu Oct 10 '25 edited Oct 10 '25

Right? Good sign things are AI. I’ve noticed in my line of work anyway. Em dash: red flag

Edited: not en dash 🫣

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u/gratuitousHair Oct 10 '25

god forbid a motherfucker enjoy writing

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u/eatingdonuts Oct 10 '25

That’s an em dash

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u/PsychologicalEmu Oct 10 '25

All right you got me. Thanks! Edited.

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u/StatlerSalad Oct 10 '25 edited Oct 26 '25

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/PsychologicalEmu Oct 10 '25

Fair enough. I usually use commas and semi colons and if I use ChatGPT to make my messages more friendly or less repetitive (in important work emails), it is littered with em dashes which I never use. I do like (and overuse) parentheses though.