The paper estimates 3I/ATLAS lost 1.05-6.56 meters of surface material (0.10-1.13% of its mass, or 10^9-10^10 kg) during its solar system passage based on observed production rates.
Narrowband Radio Technosignature Search toward 3I/ATLAS with FAST
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abstract
3I/ATLAS is the third confirmed interstellar object passing through the Solar System. In this work, we conduct narrowband radio technosignature search toward 3I/ATLAS using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) L-band multibeam receiver from October 2025 to January 2026 on 4 separate dates (i.e. Mars closest, perihelion, Earth closest and a post-Earth-closest epoch, respectively). We carry out frequency-drifting signal searching with signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) over 10 within 1.05-1.45 GHz via \texttt{bliss} pipeline. These signal hits are grouped into event by beam, frequency and drift rate matching, the events are then filtered by cluster analysis and drift rate cut-off. We also characterized the events by their significance in SNR, structure tensor as well as principal component analysis (PCA). No credible narrowband radio technosignature are detected from 3I/ATLAS after visual inspections. The null results place constraints on the presence of transmitters above $2.862\times 10^{-3}$ W. We further introduce a Bayesian inference framework to assess the occurrence probability of hypothetical transmitters while accounting for uncertainty in their characteristic transmitter power through physically motivated priors.
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Assessment of the Mass Loss and Radius Change of 3I/ATLAS Based on Observed Production Rates
The paper estimates 3I/ATLAS lost 1.05-6.56 meters of surface material (0.10-1.13% of its mass, or 10^9-10^10 kg) during its solar system passage based on observed production rates.