The enigmatic 3I/ATLAS has reappeared, after circling the Sun, allowing astronomers to once again observe the rare interstellar visitor. Almost everyone says it’s obviously a comet, but Avi Loab insists: it could be an extraterrestrial ship, which has started to accelerate to escape us.
After circling the Sun, which most experts believe is a comet composed mainly of ice of carbon dioxide, continues in its orbit extremely eccentric.
The mysterious interstellar body must perform the closest approach to Earth a few days before Christmas, on December 19th, as it heads out of our star system once again, towards its destination — whatever that may be.
Judging by the most recent data, 3I/ATLAS survived perihelionthe point in the orbit where it passes closest to the Sun, practically intact, contradicting the hypothesis that , put forward by the Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb in one published earlier this week.
New images captured by the Nordic Optical Telescope, in the Canaries, “show a single body, without any sign of fragmentation after passing through perihelion two weeks earlier,” Loeb acknowledged in a follow-up published on Wednesday.
The images also reveal the prominent “anti-tail” of the 3I/ATLASan accumulation of jets pointing toward the Sun and suspected to be composed of larger dust particlesless affected by the pressure of solar radiation, which will be a clear indication that it is a comet.
However, for Loeb This is just one of two possible scenarios. These jets can also be a evidence of “drivers of a technological ship”the astronomer told .
Loeb suggests that, if 3I/ATLAS is truly a visitor to a technological civilization, a possibility that has repeatedly defendedyou may be trying accelerate its exit from the Solar System at a breakneck pace.
Let’s face it: moving away from Earth as quickly as possible doesn’t sound completely unreasonable these days, notes .
“Technological thrusters that direct the exhaust toward the Sun would accelerate in the opposite direction,” writes Loeb in his most recent text. “This maneuver after perihelion could be used by a ship that intends to gain speed instead of reducing it through a gravitational pull from the Sun.”
“The basis of science is curiosity, humility to learn,” recalls Loeb, who has seen ETs quite a bit. “Let us wait a few more weeks, we will understand what is happening, and we can only hope that the object does not bring gifts unwanted to Earth during the festivities.”
The structure was in images collected in August by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, and most astronomers consider it to be just a comethas received Loeb’s theory with skepticism
Last week, Jason T. Wrightprofessor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University, wrote on his blog that there were no indications that 3I/ATLAS was an alien ship, disassembling point by point Loeb’s allegations about .
“It’s obviously a comet.”diz Wright.
Also Tom StatlerNASA’s lead scientist for small bodies in the solar system, told The Guardian last month that there is a lot of evidence that we are simply faced with a rare visitor in the form of a natural comet from another star system.
“It looks like a comet. Does comet things. It very, very strongly resembles, in practically every way, the comets we know. It’s a comet“, concluded Statler at the time.
Despite this, Loeb is not willing to abandon the idea that we could be facing an extraterrestrial spacecraft. But, as the Spanish say, ‘you can say that you are not a duck, but if you have a beak, if you swim, if you have feathers and if you do what… you are a duck‘.
3I/ATLAS is expected to reach its closest point to Earth in just over a month. At that time we will finally know what the mysterious interstellar visitor is — the third to visit us, after and .
