Interstellar visitor 3I/Atlas is hurtling towards Earth and is course to reach its closest point to us next week as it zooms through our solar system, posing risks we are not ready for, a boffin warns
A mystery space object feared to be an alien spaceship will reach its closest point to Earth next week – and could pose a threat to humanity.
The Manhattan-sized space rock known as 3I/Atlas is believed by most scientists to be a comet, but theoretical physicist Avi Loeb said a swathe of anomalies suggest it may not be natural and could pose a huge collision risk if it deviates from its expected route. And he warned: “If 3I/Atlas is technological, it could pose a threat to humanity. We do not have a response protocol for alien technology.
“But after the first encounter — as long as we survive it — there will be political will to invest trillions of dollars in a warning system of interceptors that take close-up photos of anomalous interstellar objects.
“3I/Atlas is expected to arrive closest to Earth in a week, on December 19, 2025. Let us hope that we will not get unwanted gifts for the holidays.”
Loeb, a professor of science at top US university Harvard, warned that ignoring the anomalies could lead to comet experts miss “important opportunities” to learn more about the universe.
He added: “Science is a work in progress. Anomalies offer a multitude of interpretations that are tested by new data that can rule out all but one of them.”
In a Q&A session on his blog, the space boffin said: “Humanity launched technological objects into space, so we must conclude that alien life forms could do the same. This possibility must be added to the training data set of comet experts when studying interstellar objects.
“It is arrogant to believe that we are alone in the Milky-Way because it contains 100 billion stars. Since we emerged from a soup of chemicals which is common on habitable Earth-mass planets, common sense suggests that the galaxy is teaming with life.”
He added: “There are about a hundred billion stars with similar properties to the Sun in the Milky Way; roughly a tenth of them host a habitable Earth-size planet.
“If you roll the dice on billions of Earth-sun analogues, surely you would — or at least could — find other space entrepreneurs on some exoplanets? There is no reason why 3I/Atlas is not a ship launched from one of them.”
The enigmatic space rock – blasting through the Solar System at 150,000mph – has sparked wild theories since it was first spotted in the summer. Bigwigs at Nasa last month insisted it was a comet on a one-way journey through our galaxy.
But we told yesterday how spoon bender Uri Geller believes the aliens onboard will “come in peace and will save us from nuclear war”. He said: “Humans are on the brink of self-destruction because of nuclear bombs. The only thing that can save us are extraterrestrials.”
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