The alert went out across every major observatory: turn your eyes to the ecliptic plane. An interstellar object, 3I/ATLAS, was defying all expectations. Initial tracking data showed it was speeding up, but not in a way that made any sense. It was a ghost in the machine of our solar system. So, the James Webb Space Telescope was given a single, urgent task: find out what this thing is. The infrared images are now back, and they don’t show rock or ice. They show a plume of superheated gas, a bizarre chemical composition, and a pattern of acceleration that looks eerily… engineered.
