Earlier this week, NASA officials released long-delayed images of interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS.
One of the shots, taken by the HiRISE camera attached to the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows the mysterious object blazing past the Red Planet in early October. The image shows a “fuzzy white ball,” per NASA associate administrator Amit Kshatriya, which is being lit up by the Sun — a “cloud of dust and ice called the coma, which is shed by the comet.”
The image was our closest look at the object yet, and was taken from a mere 19 million miles away, with a resolution of around 19 miles per pixel.
And according to Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who has long proffered the far-fetched theory that 3I/ATLAS could be an alien spacecraft visiting the solar system, there’s something off about the latest image. (NASA has yet to release its own closer analysis of the HiRISE data, though it’s pushed back against Loeb’s theorizing, saying the overwhelming evidence points to it being a natural comet, though a very unusual one.)
For his part, Loeb says there’s something strange about the jets emanating from the object, which appear to be pointing in the direction of motion, not in the direction of the Sun, as previously identified in Hubble Space Telescope data.
“It is easy to explain a plume of gas and dust extended towards the Sun as a result of the illumination of pockets of ice by sunlight or away from the Sun as a result of radiation pressure or the solar wind,” he wrote in a blog post. “It is also possible to explain a trailing stream that the object leaves behind as the drag on the solar wind slows it down relative to the object.”
“But it is much more difficult to account for a plume extended perpendicular to the direction of the Sun and ahead of the object,” he concluded.
While Kshatriya appears to have vexed Loeb by opening Wednesday’s announcement livestream with an outright denial of any fringe theories that suggest 3I/ATLAS is anything but a natural comet, the Harvard astronomer is still holding onto his guns.
“Could this be a technological signature of illuminating or clearing the path from any hazardous micrometeorites that may cause damage to a technological object?” he pondered of the counterintuitive plume.
Fortunately, 3I/ATLAS is expected to make its closest pass of Earth on December 19, allowing ground- and space-based telescopes to once again take a closer look, allowing us to “characterize the jets of 3I/ATLAS by measuring their composition, speed and mass loading rate,” per Loeb.
Doing so could finally convince Loeb that 3I/ATLAS is either a natural comet from a different star system — or an alien mothership that may or may not pose an existential risk to humanity.
“These details will inform us without a doubt whether the jets are produced by natural pockets of ice that are warmed by sunlight or by technological thrusters,” Loeb wrote.
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