Could the Milky Way’s Missing Mass Be Hiding in a Swarm of Interstellar Comets?

3I/ATLAS has caused quite a stir over the last year, inviting astronomers to update what they know about other solar systems as well as our own. However, this third interstellar visitor may have an unexpected impact on our understanding of dark matter. A new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv from researchers at the University of Hamburg, attempts to calculate the impact that the presence of large amounts of interstellar objects (ISOs) would have on our calculation of dark matter in our galaxy.