  Hopes are being widely expressed that C/2023 A3 could become a naked-eye
object about the time of its perihelion passage in late 2024. However, based on
its past and current performance, the comet is expected to disintegrate before
reaching perihelion. Independent lines of evidence point to its forthcoming
inevitable collapse. The first issue, which was recently called attention to by
I. Ferrin, is this Oort cloud comet's failure to brighten at a heliocentric
distance exceeding 2 AU, about 160 days preperihelion, accompanied by a sharp
drop in the production of dust (Af\rho). Apparent over a longer period of time,
but largely ignored, has been the barycentric original semimajor axis inching
toward negative numbers and the mean residual increasing after the light-curve
anomaly, suggesting a fragmented nucleus whose motion is being affected a
nongravitational acceleration; and an unusually narrow, teardrop dust tail with
its peculiar orientation, implying copious emission of large grains far from
the Sun but no microscopic material recently. This evidence suggests that the
comet has entered an advanced phase of fragmentation, in which increasing
numbers of dry, fractured refractory solids stay assembled in dark, porous
blobs of exotic shape, becoming undetectable as they gradually disperse in
space.
