3I/ATLAS was first spotted as a faint speck on the edge of the solar system, moving with a trajectory no local object could follow. It was clearly interstellar—born beyond the gravitational embrace of our Sun, flung across the galaxy by some unknown force, now drifting silently through our neighborhood. At first, it was treated as a cosmic curiosity, like its predecessors, ‘Oumuamua and Borisov. But even in its earliest images, something felt off. Unlike most interstellar objects, 3I/ATLAS was unusually bright—and not in a way that made sense. Its magnitude didn’t correspond to its estimated size or composition. It shimmered with an unnatural consistency, its brightness neither fading as expected nor flaring with any sign of outgassing or dust release. Traditional comets tend to brighten in bursts as ice sublimates, but this one remained steady—as if it were powered from within. Telescopes across the globe turned to observe it, and Webb, with its unparalleled ability to peer into the infrared spectrum, was brought in to decode the mystery. What it saw changed everything.
