Infrathin part 1

“A mystery interstellar object discovered last week is likely to be the oldest comet ever seen – possibly predating our solar system by more than three billion years, researchers say. The object was first spotted on 1 July 2025 by the ATLAS survey telescope in Chile, when it was about 670 million km from the Sun. The ‘water ice-rich’ visitor, named 3I/ATLAS, is only the third known object from beyond our solar system ever spotted in our cosmic neighbourhood and the first to reach us from a completely different region of our Milky Way galaxy. It could be more than seven billion years old, according to University of Oxford astronomer Matthew Hopkins.” – Newly discovered interstellar object 'may be oldest comet ever seen' | The Royal Astronomical Society [retrieved 10-24-2025]

you said I’ve been talking about death since we met

well death was here twice now

grabbing my ankles and shaking me upside down

in a hasty bid for spiritual loose change

one night the house became so quiet

that the shadows strived to escape

since then I have difficulty sleeping in darkness

I want to believe that after all my decades of

posturing and theorizing

the telescope finally swung in the correct direction

seeing things that were always there

but which I never looked for

nor knew existed

tumbling for billions of years

before threatening this thin fabric

[RK 10/24/2025]