Many interstellar objects are currently heading toward Earth. Perhaps they understand how dire things are here and are offering us a glimmer of hope in the form of total annihilation.
For a while there, I (but mostly the hundreds of actual scientists and researchers putting in the work) was tracking every movement of an asteroid that looked like it was heading right toward us… until it suddenly wasn’t anymore.
Now, there’s a new interstellar object heading right for us. And at least one prominent scientist thinks it might be aliens, or alien tech. A new revelation about the object bolsters this theory: it appears to be emitting its own light.
Space things don’t usually do that unless they’re stars. And stars don’t move freely like this thing is.
3I/ATLAS, the third-ever observed interstellar object to cruise through our solar system, and quite possibly, depending on who you ask, a hunk of rock, a radioactive supernova shard, or a slow-rolling alien spacecraft covered in space dust.
Scientists Think This Interstellar Object Could Be Emitting Its Own Light
While the scientific consensus so far seems to be leaning toward it being just a regular old comet, Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, known for his unconventional theories that make headlines, is going against the grain as usual.
Here’s what we know about it so far: NASA’s Hubble telescope spotted 3I/ATLAS glowing with what appears to be a coma, the cloudy halo comets emit when their icy bits are vaporized by the Sun. But oddly, there’s no tail. No telltale streak of dust pointing away from the Sun like you’d expect from your average cosmic ice-covered rock.
Instead, the glow seems to be concentrated ahead of its motion, like a flashlight.
Loeb and his colleague Eric Keto suspect that the glow is self-generated, rather than sunlight bouncing off dust. The light, they claim, is coming from the object itself. That would suggest the object is not only smaller than expected, but might also be powered by radioactive material.
Loeb’s theory posits that it’s a nuclear-powered alien spacecraft that has slowly disintegrated after eons in deep space. Truly, it’s a hell of a theory and a mighty leap to take. But I guess we’re still in the “no wrong answers” phase of the ideation process, so why not?
The trajectory is also a little concerning. 3I/ATLAS has taken an oddly intimate path through the solar system, brushing past Earth and Jupiter…kind of like it’s scoping out the neighborhood. Next up: Mars. This fall, it’ll make a close flyby of the red planet, and NASA’s already got plans to point the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s cameras at it.
Maybe it’s a comet. Or perhaps it’s a long-abandoned alien spacecraft slowly ripping the pieces in our solar system that, if I may tag on my own theory onto Loeb’s theory, is a harbinger of horrors to come because… what caused that giant spaceship to break apart in the first place?
We won’t find out more until October, but in the meantime, I’m going to write this manuscript for a science fiction novel quickly.
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