Is 3I/Atlas an alien spacecraft or just a comet? What we know

Is 3I/Atlas an alien spacecraft or just a really interesting rock hurling through the cosmos?

That debate has been raging ever since the comet, only the third known interstellar object to enter our solar system, was first detected by the Hubble Space Telescope in July. Now, NASA is facing more pressure to release whatever information it may be withholding, which could either intensify the debate – or end it.

The main scientist suggesting that 3I/ATLAS could be an alien technology is Dr. Avi Loeb, a Harvard astrophysicist. As evidence, Loeb points to the comet’s unique characteristics, including its unusual trajectory, which tracks closely to the alignment of planets in our solar system.

Studies have also detected nickel in the 3.5-mile-long comet’s gas plume, which some associate with industrial alloys. Also, unlike normal comets, 3I/ATLAS appears to have no visible tail.

“There is no tail. More importantly, there is a glow in front of the object instead of behind it,” Dr. Loeb said. “Zebra is identified by its stripes, right? How do you tell the difference between a horse and a zebra? It’s the stripes. So, how do you tell a comet from a rock that doesn’t have any eyes? You tell it by the cometary tail.”

Loeb has been frequently critical of the U.S. government for what he says is a lack of transparency on the issue of UFOs. He is also a bestselling author of books including Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth and Interstellar: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future in the Stars.

3I/Atlas just made its closest pass by the sun on Oct. 29. During that approach, scientists noted that 3I/ATLAS brightened much faster than they anticipated. It will reach its closest point to Earth, 168 million miles away, on Dec. 19.

On Wednesday, Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna called on NASA to share unreleased data and images of 3I/Atlas, which Loeb is also demanding.

“This information is of great importance to advancing our understanding of interstellar visitors and their interaction with our solar system,” Luna wrote in a letter to acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy.

NASA, for its part, admits that it doesn’t have all the answers.

“NASA missions are working together to track and study this rare, interstellar comet as it passes through our solar system,” the agency says on its official 3I/Atlas webpage.

Virtually every NASA asset in the solar system is playing a part in studying 3I/Atlas, including the Perseverance Mars rover, the Europa Clipper space probe, the Parker space probe, and Hubble’s successor, the Webb space telescope.

While Loeb is not alone in hypothesizing the comet is possibly an alien spacecraft, he is largely alone in the professional scientific community.

“It looks like a comet. It does comet things. It very, very strongly resembles, in just about every way, the comets that we know,” said Tom Statler, NASA’s lead scientist for solar system small bodies. “The evidence is overwhelmingly pointing to this object being a natural body. It’s a comet.”

Oxford University astrophysicist Chris Lintott outright dismissed the alien theory, saying, “Any suggestion that it’s artificial is nonsense on stilts, and is an insult to the exciting work going on to understand this object.”

In a recent appearance on KTLA, renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson weighed in.

“We should always investigate new stuff,” Tyson said. “If it’s mysterious and your first thought is, ‘It must be aliens?’ … just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean aliens did it.”