Washington. Speeding through the solar system, comet 3I/Atlas is captivating scientists and Internet users, some of whom wonder if it is an extraterrestrial spacecraft.
This possibility, refuted by NASA, has also been raised by a member of the United States Congress and by prominent conspiracy theorists, among others. And it has gained popularity, fueled by Harvard researcher Avi Loeb and fake images generated by artificial intelligence.
“It is incredible to see the level of involvement of people” in this debate, says Thomas Puzia, astrophysicist and director of the Chilean observatory that detected 3I/Atlas.
“It is very dangerous and, in a way, misleading to let these speculations prevail over the scientific process,” he warned AFP, in a thinly veiled criticism of his Harvard colleague, who has been insisting for weeks that the extraterrestrial hypothesis cannot be ruled out.
“All the facts, without exception, indicate that it is a normal object in interstellar space. That makes it exceptional, without a doubt, but there is nothing that we cannot explain with physics and astrophysics,” Puzia replied.
The US space agency (NASA) published new photographs of the comet and reaffirmed that it is not an alien spacecraft.
billions of years
Since its detection in July, 3I/Atlas, the third object outside our solar system detected in history, continues to generate controversy.
The case is reminiscent of the debate that shook the scientific community in 2017, when another mysterious interstellar bolide, Oumuamua, passed close to Earth.
Even then, Avi Loeb supported the theory of an extraterrestrial spacecraft, a thesis he later defended in a book.
This time, also emphasizing the existence of “anomalies,” he accuses his colleagues of lacking open-mindedness.
“Obviously, it could be of natural origin (…) but we must consider the possibility that it is of technological origin, because, if so, the implications for humanity would be enormous,” Loeb said.
“We really want to find signs of life in the universe (…) but 3I/Atlas is a comet,” replied Amit Kshatriya, a senior NASA official, at a press conference. “It looks and behaves like a comet.”
The comet “offers an unprecedented view of an extrasolar system potentially billions of years older than our own solar system (…) and all of this is completely overshadowed by the UFO debate,” laments Thomas Puzia.
If there’s one thing everyone agrees on, it’s that Atlas is anything but ordinary.
The comet holds many mysteries, particularly about its origin and exact composition, which scientists hope to unravel through observations in the coming weeks as it approaches Earth.
“Shivers”
This small solid body, composed of rock and ice and coming from the far reaches of space, could help better understand “how planets form” or even “how life can arise around other stars in the Milky Way, at different times in the galaxy,” emphasizes the researcher.
“It’s a window into the distant past, so remote that it could even predate the formation of our Earth and our Sun,” said NASA scientist Tom Statler, adding that he gets “chills” from the prospect.
Unlike the first two previously detected interstellar objects, which were studied very succinctly, astronomers have had months to observe 3I/Atlas.
And they hope this is just the beginning, thanks to the constant improvement of observation methods.
“Now we should be able to find many more each year,” said Darryl Seligman of Michigan State University.