2026 Karlis Kaufmanis Lecture

In July 2025, a telescope in Chile detected an incoming object, known as 3I/ATLAS. This small comet likely formed more than seven billion years ago - before the Sun - in a star system in a very different part of the galaxy to that which we find ourselves in, and is only the third interstellar object yet detected passing through the Solar System.
In this talk, Chris Lintott explores what these enigmatic objects can tell us and how they might have influenced the Earth’s formation, place them in the context of what we’re learning from the small bodies of the Solar System, including the latest results from the OSIRIS-REx mission to threatening near Earth object Bennu. The results taken together suggest a much more dynamic, and even chaotic, history for the Solar System than many would have expected. With the Vera Rubin Observatory, which will discover 3-5 million asteroids in the next year or two now coming on stream, we stand on the cusp of a revolution in what we know about our cosmic neighbourhood - and the interstellar objects that visit it.