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9th August 2025
12:16pm BST
A Harvard scientist who claims that an object hurtling through space may not be a comet but in fact an alien probe has said it 'may come to save us or destroy us'.
Interstellar entity named 3I/ATLAS was first discovered on July 1, and a group of researchers claimed the “potentially hostile” alien threat could come to attack Earth.
Writing in the controversial study, they said: “The consequences, should the hypothesis turn out to be correct, could potentially be dire for humanity.”
The research was conducted by Avi Loeb, Adam Hibberd and Adam Crowl, with Loeb writing in a blog post that he believes that the position of this object offers “various benefits to an extraterrestrial intelligence.”
One of the benefits he wrote of was that 3I/ATLAS will make close approaches to Jupiter, Mars and Venus, which could allow aliens to stealthily plant spy “gadgets” there.
By late November the entity will slip behind the sun and not be visible to Earth.
Loeb adds: “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.”
Loeb believes that this could lead to an attack which could “possibly require defensive measures to be undertaken.”
In a new interview with CNN, Loeb claims that one detail points to 3I/ATLAS being different from a regular comet.
“Usually, for comets, you see a tail trailing behind the object,” he said.
“Here, the glow is actually in front of it. We’ve never seen such a thing. A comet doesn’t glow in front.”
In a blog post, he described the glow as "puzzling".
“It may come to save us or destroy us. We’d better be ready for both options and check whether all interstellar objects are rocks.”
He explained that the "existence of a glow ahead of 31/ATLAS but no evidence of gas molecules" is confusing.
However, not everyone is convinced by Loeb’s theory.
Samantha Lawler, an astronomer at the University of Regina in Canada who studies solar system dynamics, 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 himself admitted his spy theory is somewhat far-fetched.
He said: “By far, the most likely outcome will be that 3I/ATLAS is a completely natural interstellar object, probably a comet.”
He even warned the public to take his paper with a pinch of salt.
Loeb added: “This paper is contingent on a remarkable but, as we shall show, testable hypothesis, to which the authors do not necessarily ascribe, yet is certainly worthy of an analysis and a report.
“The hypothesis is an interesting exercise in its own right, and is fun to pursue, irrespective of its likely validity.”
