As if we didn't have enough to worry about already, a comet more or less the size of Manhattan is buzzing through our solar system. Its trajectory indicates it is likely an interstellar traveler, having come from somewhere... out there. And it's behaving oddly; oddly enough for one Harvard astrophysicist to postulate that it might be an alien probe of some kind.
Scientists have discovered that the 3I/ATLAS — a Manhattan-sized interstellar object that potentially has alien tech — is much larger than previously thought, according to a new report.
First discovered by NASA on July 1, the cosmic anomaly has been under watch by Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb and his team as it shoots across the solar system. The object, which is believed to be a comet, reportedly has interstellar origins, making it the third ever object from beyond the solar system ever detected after ‘Oumuamua, which was discovered in 2017, and 2I/Borisov in 2019.
Now the team has gleaned some “sizable” new intel on the interstellar visitor, namely that the “mass of 3I/ATLAS must be bigger than 33 billion tons,” per a blog post by Loeb.
Here's the thing that should engender a little skepticism: Professor Loeb thought Oumuamua might have been alien tech, too. In the case of 3I/Atlas, he has some scattered evidence to support his claim:
More controversially, Loeb and his team believe that the celestial passerby, which is comprised mostly of carbon dioxide, could potentially be an alien probe that was sent to conduct reconnaissance on Earth — possibly with hostile intentions.
“The hypothesis in question is that [31/ATLAS] is a technological artifact, and furthermore has active intelligence. If this is the case, then two possibilities follow,” Dr. Loeb, Adam Drowl and Adam Hibberd, wrote in a paper published on July 17. “First, that its intentions are entirely benign and second, they are malign.”
They felt that it could be a spacecraft based on several pieces of evidence, namely its non-gravitational acceleration and its unusual approach to Venus, Mars and Jupiter, which the paper postulated could be “key target planets.”
31/ATLAS’s “low retrograde tilt” — spinning in the opposite direction of the solar system’s other bodies — would seemingly allow it to “access our planet with relative impunity.”
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Granted, I'm a biologist by education and not an astrophysicist, but this seems like thin stuff to me.
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It would take more than an odd tumble in orbit to establish that this is any kind of alien artifact. It would take some kind of unmistakable technological signature. Some kind of transmission, perhaps radio, perhaps some indication of some kind of laser or other radiated signal. It would take some evidence of a deliberate course change, or some change in its relative velocity that can't be explained by a nearby gravity well or solar radiation.
Without that, it's just another comet. An interesting and odd one that may have been traveling the depths of interstellar space for thousands or millions of years, but still, just a comet.
Of course, I could be wrong. In which case - well, dig out all your old Slim Whitman albums.
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