This is John Batchel, a conversation with a good colleague Bob Zimmerman about the comet,

the interstellar comet, passing through our solar system on its way to another solar system.

The composition, according to a new analysis, has more deuterium than a comet in our solar system.

What is the significance, Bob, explores it as best we can.

Comes to a conclusion before I give him a hard time about

Andromeda Strain, the creature from another solar system galaxy that drives the movie.

It's old, I understand, but it's fun, and I recommend it.

Here's Bob Zimmerman on, A Visitor from Afar. More tonight. Well, we're not going to do much about

it, to be very honest, but with the scientists studying as best as they can, it's already flown

past the sun, It's on its way

out of the solar system. But the data from it has been really fascinating. It is a comet. It is

remarkably like comets in our solar system, which is quite significant because it indicates

our solar system is not that much different than others. That's at least the preliminary

results. But we have new results that suggest that it isn't as similar to our comets as our

comets are. Scientists using the Alma telescope in Chile have determined that interstellar

comet 3i Atlas is enriched in Deutronium, which is a variation of

heavy water, as much as 30 times more than found in ordinary solar system comets, and 40

times more that's found on Earth.

What this suggests is that the formation process, when this formed, this comet formed

in whatever solar system it did out there somewhere in the galaxy, sometime in the past,

we don't know how long ago, the conditions were different. They think it was, let me see if I

get the words right. It's physical, different physical and chemical conditions than our own.

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