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New Study Models How Interstellar Objects Could Approach and Impact Earth

New Study Models How Interstellar Objects Could Approach and Impact Earth

A new model simulating billions of interstellar objects finds that any hypothetical impacts would favour low latitudes.

Written by Gadgets 360 Staff | Updated: 30 November 2025 20:08 IST

New Study Models How Interstellar Objects Could Approach and Impact Earth

Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Olmsted and F. Summers (STScI)

This artist's illustration shows the interstellar object Oumuamua travelling through our solar system

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Highlights

Models show ISO approaches cluster near solar apex and galactic plane
Hypothetical impacts favour low latitudes and northern hemisphere zones
Study maps relative risks, confirming real impact chances remain tiny

Only three interstellar wanderers have been discovered by astronomers thus far: Oumuamua (2017), comet 2I/Borisov (2019), and the more recent 3I/ATLAS (2025). In order to evaluate the risks and effects on Earth, a recent study models their trajectories. Despite the extreme rarity of such events—NASA states that 3I/ATLAS is not a threat to Earth—researchers discover interesting trends. According to the survey, interstellar objects primarily come from the galactic plane and the direction of motion of the Sun.

Modelling Impact Probability

According to the new study, the Michigan State team simulated ~10^10 hypothetical Interstellar objects(ISO), yielding roughly 10^4 crossing Earth's orbit. They found impacts twice as likely from two directions – the solar apex and the galactic plane. Slower objects, easily captured by the Sun's gravity, dominate this group.

The models suggest possible impacts would favour low latitudes near the equator and slightly more in the northern hemisphere. The researchers explicitly do not predict any actual impact rate; their work only outlines relative risk patterns for future surveys.

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Known Visitors and Risks

Interstellar objects are cosmic bodies travelling through our Solar System. So far they include ‘Oumuamua and Borisov as faintly comet-like visitors. Many more have passed unseen over Earth's 4.6-billion-year history. For perspective, one analysis estimates only 1–10 ISO-sized objects (≈100m wide) have struck Earth over billions of years.

Some may even have created ancient craters like South Africa's Vredefort structure. Space agencies stress these bodies behave like ordinary comets, not alien spacecraft. The chance of an ISO striking Earth is thought to be vanishingly small – astronomers calculate such an event is extremely unlikely in any human lifetime.

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