Scientists notice ‘something strange’ about the mystery comet hurtling towards the sun

The comet is due to shoot past the sun in October

Scientist working with the James Webb Space Telescope are trying their best to learn all they can about the rare space rock, which they discovered in July.

This rock is the third ever confirmed interstellar comet and is due to shoot past our sun in October.

With the help of near-infrared technology, the comet's physical properties can be interpreted from the light it emits.

Scientists estimate the comet to be around 3.5 miles wide, making it one of the largest interstellar objects ever seen.

The comet is moving at a speed of 130,000 mph in an unusually flat and straight line, resulting in the highest velocity recorded of an interstellar object.

This suggests the comet has been travelling for billions of years, being slingshotted by gravitational pull.

One study also notes that the rock is approximately 3 billion years older than our 4.6 billion-year-old solar system.

Imaging collected by the scientists revealed a carbon dioxide atmosphere around the comet. This could be due to where the comet was formed near the CO2 ice line of the swirling gas from which it was formed.

"Our observations are compatible with an intrinsically CO2-rich nucleus, which may indicate that 3I/Atlas contains ices exposed to higher levels of radiation than Solar System comets, or that it formed close to the CO2 ice line in its parent protoplanetary disk," as reported by the researchers, per Metro.