Harvard astrophysicist remains skeptical on 3I/ATLAS despite NASA images
Even after NASA’s release of new images of 3I/ATLAS on Wednesday, Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb remains unconvinced that the interstellar object is “just a comet.”
Loeb, who has suggested the object could be an alien vessel, told Elizabeth Vargas Reports, “Let’s wait and see… Bureaucrats or unimaginative scientists want us to believe in the expected, but the rest of us know the best is yet to come,” News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
NASA officials described 3I/ATLAS as an unusually large and atypical comet, but Loeb argues the new data reveal little beyond the object’s outer “skin,” composed of ices and dust that evaporate when exposed to sunlight.
He maintains that anomalies such as the object’s size, chemical signatures, and mysterious surface jets remain unexplained.
Loeb believes definitive answers could emerge by Dec. 19, when 3I/ATLAS reaches its closest point to Earth, approximately 170 million miles away.
“I would say by Dec. 19 we would have enough data. There would be a flood of data that would tell us what this object is,” he said.
One of Loeb’s colleagues, author and theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, has said the unique characteristics of 3I/ATLAS, compared to other comets, is likely attributable to its vast age of 7 billion years.
“Over 7 billion years, it’s had plenty of time to accumulate different gases, different elements, different kinds of environments that it goes into,” he told NewsNation recently. “I think that explains a lot of the mystery behind the comet.”
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