In brief
- NASA officials said Comet 3I Atlas showed no signs of anything beyond a standard comet.
- Public speculation intensified during the government shutdown when NASA could not comment.
- Scientists said the comet likely came from an older star system but posed no threat to Earth.
NASA officials tried to shut down weeks of online theories on Wednesday, insisting that an interstellar object passing through the solar system was a comet despite a wave of claims that it might be an alien craft.
The agency had stayed silent during the recent U.S. government shutdown, leaving a vacuum that fueled speculation about the object known as 3I Atlas.
During an hour-long press conference at the Goddard Space Flight Center, officials said the object’s behavior matched a standard comet and that the data gave them no reason to think otherwise.
They said the theories that spread online had no support in the measurements collected by NASA’s instruments.
When 3I Atlas first appeared earlier this year, Avi Loeb, a Harvard astrophysicist, speculated that the interstellar object may have been artificial, questioning whether 3I Atlas fit normal comet behavior, helping spark wider online speculation.
U.S. lawmakers echoed similar concerns online, elevating the idea that NASA was withholding information and giving the theories a broader reach.
“I think it’s important that we talk about how this object is a comet. It looks and behaves like a comet, and all evidence points to it being a comet,” Amit Kshatriya, NASA’s Associate Administrator, said during the press conference. “But this one came from outside the solar system, which makes it fascinating, exciting, and scientifically very important.”
Comet 3I Atlas was first detected on July 1 of this year by NASA’s ATLAS survey telescope in Chile, making it only the third confirmed interstellar object ever observed.
Later that month, the Hubble Space Telescope captured images from about 277 million miles away, revealing a teardrop-shaped coma and estimating the nucleus to be between about 1,400 feet and 3.5 miles across.
The closest images came on October 2, when NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter passed within nineteen million miles and photographed a bright, diffuse cloud of dust and ice around the nucleus. The comet made its closest approach to the sun on October 30, but Earth was on the far side of its orbit at the time, limiting what ground-based telescopes could see.
Online theories grow
Still, NASA’s explanation did little to ease doubts among online audiences who had spent weeks developing alternative theories.
“Maybe if he says comet 300 more times, everyone will believe the psyop,” a viewer wrote.
“The public is not blind anymore. We remember the docs during Covid repeating lies with a straight face just like this,” another said. “Must be a big paycheck to sit there and give us this INSULTING explanation.”
The mockeries and conspiracy theories continued on social media.
“No, you can’t have managed to get worse footage than amateurs with such a big budget,” an X user wrote. “You should stop making fun of people because the masses have woken up and want to know the truth.”
Others pointed to the comet’s appearance in images, arguing it looked unlike typical comets.
“3I/ATLAS is now behaving in a bizarre, weird way. (1) A large glowing halo extending out to half a million kilometers,” another wrote. “(2) At least 7 distinct jets, some of which are anti-tails in the sunward direction. All bets are off right now on what the hell it is!”
During the press conference, viewers also called out the quality of NASA’s images, which became a focal point for skeptics.
“So you want us to believe this below is a photograph of the Eagle Nebula captured by the James Webb Space Telescope seven thousand light-years away,” another X user wrote. “But this blurry crap is the best you can offer of 3I/ATLAS, which is only 0.0000287 light-years away? NASA is a joke.”
Nicky Fox, Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said 3I Atlas was a small body made of rock, ice, and dust. As it warmed, the ice released vapor that created the surrounding coma. She said the comet already showed differences from objects that formed in this solar system, though she did not specify what those differences were.
Shawn Domagal-Goldman, Director for NASA’s astrophysics division, said the ratio of carbon dioxide to water in 3I Atlas was higher than usual for local comets, but said there were several natural explanations.
“For one, the carbon dioxide is going to bake off that comet earlier when it’s far away, but there are other well-understood processes that could explain it,” he said, noting that the ratios of carbon dioxide to water often differ in objects beyond our solar system—whether in stars or planets—and that 3I Atlas showed the same pattern.
“So it could mean—and this is the last theory for why those ratios could differ —that these ices were exposed to higher levels of radiation than comets in our system,” he said. “Or, it could be that the comet formed in a region where carbon dioxide ice was more abundant and unlike our solar system.”
Tom Statler, lead scientist for small bodies in NASA’s planetary science division, addressed the challenges of capturing images of 3I Atlas.
“Remember, space is big. Nothing is ever as close as you’d like, and these observations are very difficult,” Statler said. “It’s as if our NASA spacecraft were at a baseball game, watching from different places in the stadium. Everybody has a camera, and they’re trying to get a picture of the ball, but nobody has a perfect view, and everyone has a different camera.”
Statler said the speed of the comet was adding to the difficulty, adding that the comet’s velocity suggested it came from an older star system than our own.
“We can’t say this for sure, but the likelihood is it came from a solar system older than our own solar system itself, which gives me goose bumps to think about,” he said. “Because that means the 3I Atlas is not just a window into another solar system, it’s a window into the deep past, and so deep in the past that it predates even the formation of our Earth and our Sun.”
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