Scientist Identifies Something Strange About New Image of Mysterious Interstellar Visitor
Earlier this week, NASA officials released long-delayed images of interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS.
One of the images, taken by the HiRISE camera aboard the Agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows the mysterious object blazing past the Red Planet in early October. According to NASA associate administrator Amit Kshatriya, the image shows a “fuzzy white ball” illuminated by the Sun; “a cloud of dust and ice scattered by a comet, called a coma.”
The image was our closest look at the object yet, and was captured from just 30 million kilometers away, with a resolution of around 30 kilometers per pixel.
According to Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who has long pushed the exaggerated theory that 3I/ATLAS may be an alien spacecraft visiting the solar system, there is something odd about the latest image. (NASA has yet to release its own closer analysis of the HiRISE data, but Loeb’s theories have been pushed back, saying that overwhelming evidence, though very unusual, points to it being a natural comet.)
Loeb says there is something odd about the jets emanating from the object, which appear to point in the direction of motion rather than in the direction of the Sun, as previously identified in Hubble Space Telescope data.
“It is easy to explain a cloud of gas and dust extending towards the Sun as a result of sunlight illuminating ice sacs, or a cloud of gas and dust extending away from the Sun as a result of radiation pressure or the solar wind,” he wrote. blog post. “It is also possible to explain a trailing stream left behind by the object as friction in the solar wind slows it down relative to the object.”
“But it is much more difficult to explain a cloud that lies perpendicular to the direction of the Sun and in front of the object,” he concluded.
While Kshatriya appeared to anger Loeb by opening Wednesday’s livestream announcement by openly rejecting fringe theories suggesting that 3I/ATLAS is nothing more than a natural comet, the Harvard astronomer is still sticking to his guns.
“Could this be a technological signature to illuminate or clear the path of any hazardous micrometeorites that could damage a technological object?” he thought of the illogical feathers.
Fortunately, 3I/ATLAS is expected to make its closest pass to Earth on December 19; This will allow ground- and space-based telescopes to take a closer look once again, allowing us to “characterize the 3I/ATLAS jets by measuring their composition, velocity, and mass loading rate,” according to Loeb.
Doing so could eventually convince Loeb that 3I/ATLAS is either a natural comet from a different star system or an alien mothership that may or may not pose an existential risk to humanity.
“These details will undoubtedly tell us whether the jets are produced by natural ice deposits heated by sunlight or by technological thrusters,” Loeb wrote.
More about 3I/ATLAS: Professor Angers at NASA’s ‘Deceptive’ Press Conference on Mysterious Interstellar Object
