American scientist warns alien attack could be imminent due to Manhattan-size interstellar object 3I/ATLAS
A leading US astrophysicist has warned that an alien attack could be imminent, claiming a mysterious object hurtling through our solar system could be an extraterrestrial spacecraft.
Professor Avi Loeb of Harvard University believes that the massive interstellar mass known as 3I/ATLAS may not actually be a comet, but a craft sent by an advanced civilization.
First detected on July 1, the object is the size of Manhattan and weighs an estimated 33 billion tons, traveling at nearly twice the speed of previous interstellar visitors. Most scientists believe it is just a comet, but Prof Loeb does not believe the evidence is valid.
“He may come to save us, or he may come to destroy us. If you want to go on holiday, go before then, because who knows what will happen,” he warned.
He believes 3I/ATLAS could reach its closest point to the sun on October 29, giving it the perfect opportunity to “launch a surprise attack.”
It was the strange combination of its feathers that had Loeb and the others standing up. The object reportedly emits four grams of nickel per second but no iron. The result, he said, was nickel tetracarbonyl, an alloy “never seen before in nature and only seen in human industry.”
Speaking to The New York Post, he said: “There’s only one place where this is known to exist, and that’s in industrially produced nickel alloys. It’s never been observed in any other objects.”
“This was a process we could only imagine because it was used in industry. It had not been seen before in comets.”
“We often see beautiful tails extending from the object towards the Sun, and in this case there was no evidence of such a tail.
“Why do we see a jet pointed towards the Sun? Is it a flow of material in the direction of the Sun?”
But Loeb’s colleagues were not convinced. Oxford University astronomer Chris Lintott dismissed the claim as “nonsense” and called it an “insult” to actual scientific research.
Meanwhile, NASA has reassured the public that 3I/ATLAS poses no threat to Earth and said it will pass safely through the inner solar system later this month.
