This could be a case for Mulder and Scully because there are yet more questions when it comes to the mysterious 3I/ATLAS. Bobbing around in the far reaches of the galaxy, the interstellar comet has kept the space industry gripped since it was first discovered on July 1.
Thought to be anywhere between 7.6 and 14 billion years old, 3I/ATLAS is likely older than our solar system and the oldest comet ever discovered. But what exactly is it, and do all those conspiracy theories about an alien craft have any merit?
One supposed expert who's been championing the idea of alien life breaking free from the center of 3I/ATLAS and raining chaos on our little planet is Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb. Having already warned that it could be an 'alien mothership' and looking like it had changed direction to intercept Earth, Loeb is back with some more fear-mongering.
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Various NASA assets have been capturing close-up shots of 3I/ATLAS, and yet, we're no closer to figuring out exactly what it is. Loeb hasn't shifted from his prognosis that it's alien in origin, but speaking to The New York Post and posting on his Medium blog, he's now theorizing that a pulse-like 'heartbeat' could back up the alien idea.
Speaking to the Post, Loeb explained: "The pulses could be periodic thrusts for orbit corrections or some other internal cycle within the spacecraft."
This was echoed in his blog, titled “Are the Jets from 3I/ATLAS pulsed like a heartbeat?”
3I/ATLAS apparently 'blinks' every 16.16 hours like an interstellar lighthouse, in a phenomenon that was first published in a July issue of the Astronomy and Physics journal. Loeb accuses the 'heartbeat' of being buried in the NASA photos, saying that it wasn't “systematically studied in the published literature.”
While other experts maintain that the supposed heartbeat comes from the rotation of its nucleus, Loeb said it's improbable because "less than ten percent of the light comes” from the center of the comet.
One Hubble Space Telescope image from July 21 showed that most of the glow comes from the coma, which is a halo of gas and dust that forms around the nucleus as a comet approaches the Sun.
Loeb continued: "Therefore, the periodic modulation of its light must originate from its puffs of gas and dust that scatter sunlight around it. The puffs are periodic, like the blood stream of a heartbeat.”
As well as Loeb guessing that 3I/ATLAS having multiple jets is actually artificial thrusters, he suggests that the heartbeat is some sort of intergalactic Morse code.
If the comet was natural, he thinks the phenomenon could "arise from a sunward jet (anti-tail)” that will pulse when "a large pocket of ice on one side of the nucleus is facing the sun."
According to Loeb, "The coma will get pumped up every time the ice pocket is facing the sun."
Going with the notion that it's been created by 'aliens', 3I/ATLAS’ pulsing jet position is crucial to its position when compared to the Sun, and we should think of it as a celestial cardiogram.
Elsewhere, Loeb added the idea that 3I/ATLAS heading toward Jupiter for a March 2026 destination is so that it can seed the planet with 'satellites' to gather information for an 'extraterrestrial civilization'.
Despite Loeb's somewhat controversial musings, NASA's official position is that 3I/ATLAS is nothing more than a comet.