A group of scientists claim Earth could be facing a “possibly hostile” alien threat before the end of the year.
They believe a strange object flying through space might actually be a disguised alien spacecraft. It was spotted on July 1 and has been named 3I/ATLAS.
The study, which was posted on July 16, included a warning that said: “The consequences, should the hypothesis turn out to be correct, could potentially be dire for humanity.”
According to the researchers, the object is moving toward the sun at over 130,000 miles per hour. Some scientists believe it could be a comet that’s around 15 miles wide, but this group says there could be more to the story.
In the paper, the authors suggested the object might be alien spyware. They say it has odd traits that don’t match what you’d expect from a natural space rock.
Avi Loeb, a well-known Harvard astrophysicist who’s studied extraterrestrial objects for years, is part of the group behind the theory. In the past, he suggested the 2017 object called ʻOumuamua was possibly a fake probe from another civilization.
Loeb worked on the new paper with Adam Hibbered and Adam Crowl from the Initiative for Interstellar Studies in London. They say 3I/ATLAS has similar strange behavior, including unusual speed and a weird angle of approach.
Loeb said in a Medium post: “3I/ATLAS achieves perihelion on the opposite side of the Sun relative to Earth. This could be intentional to avoid detailed observations from Earth-based telescopes when the object is brightest or when gadgets are sent to Earth from that hidden vantage point.
“It is therefore impractical for earthlings to land on 3I/ATLAS at closest approach by boarding chemical rockets, since our best rockets reach at most a third of that speed.”
He thinks the object’s path, which takes it close to planets like Jupiter and Mars, could mean it will arrive in late November or early December.
If the theory is true and the object really is a “technological artifact,” then an alien attack on Earth is possible and could “possibly require defensive measures to be undertaken.”
Not everyone agrees. Samantha Lawler, an astronomer at the University of Regina in Canada, pushed back on the idea. She said: “All evidence points to this being an ordinary comet that was ejected from another solar system, just as countless billions of comets have been ejected from our own solar system.”
Even Loeb admits the alien idea might not pan out. He ended his comments by saying the “most likely outcome will be that 3I/ATLAS is a completely natural interstellar object, probably a comet.”