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Interstellar Objects Like Comet 3I/ATLAS Could Act As Planetary Seeds

Comet 3I/ATLAS’s appearance in the inner Solar System in July 2025 triggered a wave of interest. Not only in the comet itself, but in interstellar objects (ISO) in general. So far we only know of three ISOs, and it’s only natural to wonder about their origins, and how common they are. But scientists, being naturally curious, have other questions, too. What would happen if an ISO was captured by a young solar system?

At the recent Joint Meeting of the Europlanet Science Congress and the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Science (EPSC-DPS2025), a researcher asked what role comets like these may play when they’re captured by other stars with protoplanetary disks. It’s possible that ISOs like 3I/ATLAS could answer a longstanding question about planet formation.

Professor Susanne Pfalzner of Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany presented research showing that comets like 3I/ATLAS could act as seeds for the formation of giant planet.

“Interstellar objects may be able to jump start planet formation, in particular around higher-mass stars,” said Pfalzner.

There are two broad understandings of planet formation: the core accretion model and the gravitational instability mode.

The core accretion theory is a bottom-up model. It hypothesizes that planet formation begins on a very small scale with dust particles sticking together in a protoplanetary disk. Eventually there are pebbles, then rocks, then boulders, then planetesimals. If all goes well, the process forms planets like Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.

The gravitational instability model is a top-down model that’s similar to how we think stars form. It posits that regions in the disk become dense with matter and eventually collapse to form a planetary core. From there, gravity dominates and the core accretes more and more matter until a planet is formed.

The core accretion theory is more applicable to rocky planets, while the gravitational instability model is more applicable to giant planets like Jupiter. Recent research suggests that these mechanisms don’t operate in isolation from one another, but can work in combination to create planets.

Each of these theories, however, has unanswered questions. The core accretion theory, according to simulations, can’t create anything larger than about one meter. Boulders bounce off each other or are shattered during collisions. Pfalzner says that ISOs can explain how objects leap over the one meter barrier.

“Interstellar objects may be able to jump start planet formation, in particular around higher-mass stars,” Pfalzner said in a press release.

An artist’s illustration of Oumuamua, the first ISO discovered. It came through our Solar System in 2017. Image Credit: NASA

We only know of three ISOs because we’ve only been able to detect them for a short period of time. The first one, Oumuamua, was discovered in 2017, and in the eight years since then, we’ve found two more. Looking back over the Solar System’s roughly five billion year age, it’s easy to see how large numbers of ISOs have likely travelled through our Solar System.

But not all of them necessarily came and went. When solar systems are young, they’re dense with dust. In these environments, ISOs are more likely to be captured. Pfalzner’s research shows that a solar system could potentially capture millions of ISOs about 100 meters in diameter. Those captured objects could be the seeds for the formation of planets.

The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of interstellar comet 2I/Borisov in 2019. It was only the second ISO ever detected. Image Credit: By NASA, ESA, and D. Jewitt (UCLA) – https://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hvi/uploads/image_file/image_attachment/31897/STSCI-H-p1953a-f-1106×1106.png, Public Domain

Pfalzner’s findings also address another specific issue in exoplanet science. Jupiter-mass gas giants are rare around low-mass stars. They’re far more common around stars like ours. But the problem is that planet-forming disks around stars like the Sun are not long-lived. After about two million years, the star’s wind and radiation dissipate the disk. Observations show that stars older than about 10 million years have no protoplanetary disks. So that means there’s only a couple of million years for a giant planet to form before the disk is gone. That’s not much time.

But if Pfalzner is right, then ISOs can act as the seeds for giant planets, giving them a kickstart that allows them to form before the protoplanetary disk is gone.

“Higher-mass stars are more efficient in capturing interstellar objects in their discs,” said Pfalzner. “Therefore, interstellar object-seeded planet formation should be more efficient around these stars, providing a fast way to form giant planets. And, their fast formation is exactly what we have observed.”

An artist’s illustration of a planet-forming protoplanetary disk around a young star. Observations show that these disks may not last long enough for giant planets to form. Image Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

ISOs acting as planetary seeds isn’t the only potential solution the planet formation time scale problem. The pebble accretion model has gained traction in recent years because it can explain how giant planets could form more quickly than thought. It posits that gas drag in the disk slows down pebbles so that when they collide they tend to stick together. It could reduce the time it takes for gas giant cores to form to as little as one million years.

It’s also possible that inner regions of a protoplanetary disk persist for longer than thought, giving giant planets more time to form. Astronomers know that the giant planets in our Solar System also migrated, adding another element to the big picture. It’s possible that no ISOs are needed.

Nature doesn’t always choose A or B. There may be multiple pathways to giant planets, and ISOs could be one of them. It’s entirely possible that Jupiter, Saturn, or one of the other giant planets only exist because of an ancient ISO from a distant star system that was captured by the young Sun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-ykiXXGuCo

Finding Interstellar Visitors Flying Through The Solar System (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-ykiXXGuCo)

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OC judge convicted of fatally shooting wife faces sentencing

An Orange County Superior Court judge who was convicted of shooting his wife to death during an argument is set to be sentenced today, according to prosecutors.

Jeffrey Ferguson, 74, was convicted in April of fatally shooting his 65-year-old wife, Sheryl, during a drunken argument over money at their Anaheim Hills home on Aug. 3, 2023.

During his testimony, Ferguson admitted that he was an alcoholic and that he had been drinking that day. The couple had been married for 27 years.

Jurors convicted Ferguson on one felony count of murder and one felony enhancement of personal use of a firearm, as well as one felony enhancement of discharge of a firearm causing great bodily injury and death. Ferguson faces a maximum sentence of 40 years to life, according to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.

Ferguson was first put on trial in March, but a mistrial was declared when the jury deadlocked on a charge of second-degree murder. He was retried and convicted the following month.

Prosecutors say Ferguson and his wife were in their family room watching “Breaking Bad” when they began to quarrel.

“Instead of rendering aid to his wife, Sheryl, after shooting her as they sat in their living room watching television, Judge Jeffrey Ferguson, then 72, went outside and texted his court bailiff and clerk: ‘I just lost it. I just shot my wife. I won’t be in tomorrow. I will be in custody. I’m so sorry,’” the district attorney’s office said in a written statement released following his conviction.

The couple’s son tackled his father to wrestle the gun away, and performed CPR on his mother while being directed by emergency dispatchers, prosecutors said.

In the hours after the shooting, an inebriated Ferguson wished aloud in a police interview room for the death penalty, demanded to be punched in the face and predicted that he would burn in hell, according to video prosecutors showed during trial. He agonized over the couple’s son, who had just witnessed his mother’s violent death, and vowed not to cheat the law with “subterfuge.”

“Convict my ass,” Ferguson muttered to an imaginary jury in a police interview room.

Facing a real jury in a Santa Ana courtroom 18 months later, threatened with prison and the end of his pension as a judge, a sober Ferguson cast his wife’s death as an accident and denied criminal blame.

“We loved each other a lot,” Ferguson testified. “We didn’t argue all the time.”

Ferguson and his wife had been having a familiar fight that day. He told jurors that she was upset because they had sent money to his grown son from a previous marriage, but had not received a thank you card.

The argument continued over dinner at a restaurant, where he pointed his finger at her in imitation of a gun, making her so upset she left the table.

Ferguson told jurors his gesture had not been one of menace but of capitulation, a way of saying, “You win.”

The quarrel continued back at home. Their son, Phillip, told police he heard his mother say, “Why don’t you point a real gun at me?” before his father extended his arm and fired.

But Ferguson told jurors that is not what he heard his wife say. Instead, he said he heard: “Why don’t you put the real gun away from me?”

Ferguson said he responded by unsnapping his ankle holster, removing his Glock, and attempting to put it on the coffee table, because “I just wanted to please her.” He said he was missing tendons in his right arm.

“My arm failed,” he said. “I got a shooting pain. … I was trying to clutch it so it wouldn’t drop, and it fired. … She had a very surprised look on her face.”

His son tackled him and wrested the gun away.

“I was kind of in shell shock,” Ferguson said.

But jurors ultimately did not buy that testimony.

“The second he pulled the trigger and killed his wife Judge Jeffrey Ferguson knew he was just like the violent criminals he has sent to prison and left his son to desperately try to pump the life into his dying mother’s body while he went outside to text his friends,” Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer said in April. “This was not an accident. Ferguson was trained to never point a gun at anything he didn’t intend to destroy.”

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Trump’s Birthday Call to Modi Raises Hopes in India for a Trade Deal

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Menendez brothers’ petition for retrial denied; judge says new evidence not “particularly strong”

A Los Angeles Superior judge has denied the Menendez brothers’ petition for a new trial, saying the new alleged evidence they presented would not have changed the initial decision that put them away for life.

On Monday, LA Superior Court Judge William Ryan denied the writ of habeas corpus filed by Erik and Lyle Menendez in May 2023. The petition claimed that two new pieces of evidence proved the brothers’ father, Jose Menendez, was sexually abusive.

“The evidence alleged here is not so compelling that it would have produced a reasonable doubt in the mind of at least one juror or supportive of an imperfect self-defense instruction,” Ryan wrote in his ruling.

CBS Los Angeles has reached out to the Menendez brothers’ appellate attorney, Mark Geragos, for a comment and is waiting for a response.

One of the pieces of evidence included a letter from 1988 that Erik Menendez sent to his cousin Andy Cano detailing that he was allegedly abused by his father as a teen. The other piece was a declaration from Roy Rossello, who was their father’s former boy bandmate, that claimed that he was raped by Jose Menendez.

The brothers have maintained the stance that they killed their parents in self-defense after alleging physical, sexual and emotional abuse.

Ryan added that neither of the pieces was “particularly strong” and did not add to the “allegations of abuse that the jury already considered.”

The habeas corpus petition was just one avenue the Menendez brothers were exploring to secure their freedom. They were initially sentenced in 1996 to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the killings of their parents, Kitty and Jose Menendez, inside their Beverly Hills home.

In May 2024, they were resentenced by a judge to 50 years to life in prison, which made them immediately eligible for parole. The Mendez brothers went before a state parole board in August, where they were both denied.

The brothers are still waiting for a decision on their clemency petitions sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman has been an outspoken opponent of their release and petition for a retrial. At a Tuesday afternoon news conference, Hochman applauded the judge’s decision as he called the habeas motion meritless. It “does not come close to meeting the factual or legal standard to warrant a new trial,” Hochman said.

“The central defense of the Menendez brothers at trial has always been self-defense, not sexual abuse. The jury rejected this self-defense defense in finding them guilty of the horrific murders they perpetrated; five different appellate state and federal courts have affirmed those convictions, and nothing in the so-called ‘new’ evidence challenges any of those determinations,” Hochman said. “Our opposition to this ‘Hail Mary’ effort to obtain a new trial over 30 years later makes clear that justice, the facts, and the law demand the convictions stand.”

Chelsea Hylton

Chelsea Hylton is a web producer for CBS Los Angeles. An Inglewood native, Hylton has her master’s degree from USC. She covers local breaking news across the Southern California region. Before joining CBS in 2024, she worked at NBC LA, Telemundo 52, The Los Angeles Times and KOMO 4 News in Seattle.