Scientists now say an interstellar comet discovered earlier this month could be one of the oldest that astronomers have ever encountered.

The object seems to be travelling on a steep path - suggesting it came from the Milky Way's "thick disk", an area of ancient stars that orbits above and below the thin plane where most stars reside.

AN INTERSTELLAR space rock zooming through our solar system may be the oldest comet ever seen by humans, according to researchers. The mysterious cosmic object was discovered last week, and is

The ATLAS (short for Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) is a NASA-funded program developed by the University of Hawaii. It incorporates data from four ground-based telescopes, two in Hawaii, one in Chile, and one in South Africa, to scan the entire sky twice a night, looking for asteroids and other impactors.

It’s a fantastic opportunity to test our model on something new and possibly ancient.” The scientist explained that the comet is only the third known visitor from beyond our solar system to be spotted in our cosmic neighborhood,