A mysterious new object recently spotted between Earth and interstellar interloper 3I/ATLAS has sent social media into a frenzy. Dubbed C/2025 V1 Borisov, the comet allegedly did not showcase a tail like a cometary rock would. However, despite the speculations, the C/2025 V1 Borisov does not have an interstellar origin. It is flung far from its home in the Oort cloud, a wall believed to comprise billions of planetesimals, which are thought to have formed 4.6 billion years ago from the primordial protoplanetary disk. Comets are also present in the outer solar system’s Kuiper belt, which is also home to dwarf planets including Pluto, Charon, Orcus, Haumea, Makemake, and Quaoar.
Discovered by G. Borisov on 2025-Nov-02, many have speculated that the comet could be a mini probe sent out by its mothership, 3I/ATLAS. The perihelion of C/2025 V1 Borisov is on November 16. It will be closest to Earth tomorrow, on November 11, at a distance of 103,119,940 kilometers or 0.68 AU. Is the comet related to its interstellar cousin? Are earthlings in any kind of threat?
Here’s what Prof. Avi Loeb, a Harvard astrophysicist, has to say.
C/2025 V1 Borisov is not related to 3I/ATLAS if it did not employ non-gravitational propulsion. The closest separation of the two orbits is 75 million kilometers (0.5 au) and the objects were never closer than 225 million kilometers (1.5 au) from each other without propulsion. The measured non-gravitational acceleration of 3I/ATLAS is insufficient to bridge the gap with C/2025 V1.
Pinning the origin of C/2025 V1 Borisov to the Oort clouds, Prof. Loeb explained why
The reason for this association is that if we integrate the motion of C/2025 V1 all the way back to a distance of 1,000 times the Earth-Sun separation (au)—where planets cannot affect it—and then recompute the orbit, a value of eccentricity so close to 1 will likely drop below 1. A small gravitational impulse from Jupiter near perihelion is sufficient to make a bound Oort Cloud object appear slightly hyperbolic in the heliocentric orbital fit of JPL.
See Also: Avi Loeb Speculates 3I/ATLAS Could Be A Probe By Aliens Monitoring Us: ‘Maybe They’re Unhappy’