Ever since a mysterious interstellar object, since dubbed 3I/ATLAS, was first spotted screaming into our solar system this year, famed Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb has been raising the possibility that the interstellar interloper is an “extraterrestrial artifact” that was sent to us by an intelligent alien race.
Researchers have broadly come to the consensus that 3I/ATLAS is a comet. Most recently, observations by the Gemini South telescope in Chile confirmed that its tail is growing longer, as it releases more dust and gas the closer it approaches the Sun.
But Loeb’s not quite convinced yet. The object will make its closest pass of the Sun next month before zipping through and out the other side of our star system, which Loeb says is a perfect opportunity to have a closer look; he called on NASA to turn its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Juno probe to monitor the object as it whips by.
“If we are visited by a technological object like 3I/ATLAS — it could either visit us or release some mini-probes that arrive to Earth and appear as [unidentified aerial phenomena],” he told the “The Sol Foundation” podcast, using the US government’s term for UFOs. “And we need to be aware of that possibility.”
In a separate NewsNation interview, Loeb said the object could then “continue along its course to the next star.”
“And we just need to keep our eyes on the ball,” he added.
The researcher pointed to the object’s estimated size of anywhere up to 28.5 miles across, making it a major outlier.
“This is an object, if that is the size of it, that is a million times more massive than the previous interstellar objects we’ve seen, and that’s quite unlikely,” he told the news outlet. “There is not enough material in interstellar space.”
Loeb has also pointed out its highly unusual trajectory, which takes it close to several solar system planets, including Mars, Venus, and Jupiter. In a recent blog post, he pointed out that it will come within just 1.67 million miles of Mars’ orbit, a “remarkable fine-tuning” of the object’s path.
However, the astronomer also conceded that there could be a far more mundane explanation for the mysterious object’s appearance and behavior.
“But it may well be just a rock which has some ice on the surface that evaporates, in which case we will say it’s natural,” Loeb told NewsNation.
Nonetheless, the Harvard astronomer argued that we shouldn’t refuse to give up the possibility, albeit faint, that 3I/ATLAS is an alien artifact sent from far away.
“Whereas the dogmatist will shove anomalous data under the carpet of traditional thinking, an open-minded scientist will be thrilled to learn something new with an underlying sense of humility,” he wrote in his latest blog post. “Not only is nature more imaginative than we are, but it also does not care whether we figure it out.”
“The insistence that everything in the sky is either icy rocks or human-made technologies will not rid us of cosmic neighbors, if they exist out there,” he added.
More on interstellar objects: Mysterious Object Headed Into Our Solar System Is Changing Shape, New Image Shows