Interstellar Visitors & Time-Domain Astrophysics in the Vera Rubin Era
Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford
52:41·2026·introductory level·Public Colloquium
Oxford astrophysicist Chris Lintott examines 'Oumuamua, 2I/Borisov, and 3I/ATLAS alongside how wide-field synoptic sky surveys are transforming planetary dynamics.
In July 2025, astronomers detected something extraordinary: an object moving through our Solar System that came from somewhere else in the Milky Way.
3I/ATLAS is only the third interstellar object ever identified, and it may have formed more than 9 billion years ago — billions of years before the Sun and Earth existed. What can a visitor this ancient tell us about the history of our galaxy, the formation of planetary systems, and even the origins of our own Solar System?
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