When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope re-observed the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on Nov. 30, 2025 with its Wide Field Camera 3 instrument. | Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, D. Jewitt (UCLA). Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)Imagine a visitor from beyond our cosmic neighborhood. Not just from the next street over, but from an entirely different star system, a place we can only dream of reaching.These ancient wanderers, like comet 3I/ATLAS, are cosmic time capsules. They carry the elemental fingerprints of other stellar nurseries, offering a rare glimpse into the primordial ingredients that built worlds far, far away. Humanity wants to know the universal recipe for planet formation, and these interstellar objects are the closest we get to a direct taste.AdvertisementAdvertisementA recent study reveals something truly special about 3I/ATLAS. Astronomers got an unprecedented chance to track the precise evolution of atomic nickel and iron emissions, both before and after this comet’s Oct. 30 closest approach to the sun. This kind of detailed observation is incredibly rare. It is a big step in understanding how other planets might form. We are learning how the raw stuff of the universe gets put together in distant stellar systems, and this comet gave us a front-row seat. It is a unique window into the building blocks of alien worlds, and it is helping us map out the cosmic origins of everything, including ourselves.The ability to track atomic nickel (Ni) and iron (Fe) emissions in a comet, both before and after it swings by its star, is a big deal. For comets born in our own solar system, this kind of comprehensive dataset is almost unheard of. Only one solar system comet, C/2002 V1 (NEAT), has given us anything comparable. So, for an interstellar comet like 3I/ATLAS to provide such rich information, it is like hitting the cosmic jackpot.Why do these specific metals matter so much? Nickel and iron are heavy elements. They are fundamental building blocks for rocky planets. Seeing their abundance and how they behave in an object fr …
