This month's great leap forward is that I have written a fortran model to simulate complete QI dynamics for the first time. The great thing about having a fortran model is that you can run experiments with it. I've suspected for a while that these interstellar comets like Oumuamua, Borisov or 3I/Atlas are actually bound to the Solar system, or 3I/Atlas at least. This was based on little more than my QI intuition that objects at low acceleration, in other words out in the boondocks, tend to be bound when they are not supposed to be. This is because at low accelerations QI reduces the inertial mass and also the centrifugal force, so there's less tendency than expected for objects to go in straight lines and with a circular orbit, this means less tendency to veer off into deep space. Galactic edge stars and wide binaries are unexpectedly bound. Unexpected unless you know about QI.
As a test, I initialised 3I/Atlas at its perihelion, taking the data from the JPL Horizons website and then modelled it as it shot off into the outer solar system. With Newtonian physics it kept on going and was an interstellar comet as everyone expects. With QI, it first slowed down in its trajectory as it lost inertial mass and was more easily attracted back to the Sun, a bit like the Pioneer craft. This was very obvious after about 100 years. Then at about 1500 AU distance it came to a virtual stop and started on a very slow wide orbit around the Sun. On other words. Despite its present breakneck speed, of 68,000 m/s, it's bound and someday it will be back. This is as much of a shock to old physics as when Rutherford fired alpha particles at atoms in gold foil and saw them bounce back thus proving the existence of the hard central nucleus, or the day an Australian native threw away a bent stick and it came back and hit him on the head.
This realisation with QI that 3I/Atlas is bound solves so many of the problems that have been pointed out by Avi Loeb. It arrived in the plane of the ecliptic, and the random chance of that was very low. More importantly, 3I/Atlas is so massive: one million times the mass of the first 'interstellar' object Oumuamua and 1000 times the mass of Borisov. It is just crazy that we should see something so big. We should see 1000 Oumuamuas before we see one Borisov, and 1000 Borisovs before one 3I/Atlas. But 3I/Atlas is what it is. It would be a shock if there is so much mass in interstellar space. It is far easier to assume that 3I/Atlas is part of the Solar system, just coming in from the Oort cloud, if that exists. I suspect it might be closer in than expected. This accounts for it being in the ecliptic plane - it is just derived from the same condensed, flattened cloud that all the planets are, and its huge mass is no longer a mystery. I love simplifications, and QI always provides a few for free.
So is 3I/Atlas bound? Newton says no. QI says yes, and remember that the data is with QI in these low acceleration regimes. QI predicts galactic edge stars and wide binaries, whereas Newton does not without a ridiculous amount of arbitrary (dark) help. Anyway, this is bound to change our view of the Solar system.
