A ‘hostile alien’ object that is currently traveling through space has now broken a frightening new record.
The unknown object is flying at high speed towards Earth after NASA released a disturbing update on it.
Officially known as 3I/ATLAS, the object reached 420 million miles from the Sun by July 1 and is making its way towards Earth.
But the identity of the mass has stumped scientists, with many puzzling as to what it could be.
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NASA shared a concerning update after observations from the Hubble Space Telescope captured the clearest images we have had so far, revealing that it is the fastest interstellar object ever detected by astronomers.
The images show that 3I/ATLAS is traveling at a staggering 130,000 miles per hour (209,000 km/h).
In a statement, David Jewitt of the University of California, Los Angeles, who is also the science team leader for the Hubble observations, said: “No one knows where the comet came from. It’s like glimpsing a rifle bullet for a thousandth of a second. You can't project that back with any accuracy to figure out where it started on its path.”
Jewitt added: “This latest interstellar tourist is one of a previously undetected population of objects bursting onto the scene that will gradually emerge.
“This is now possible because we have powerful sky survey capabilities that we didn't have before. We've crossed a threshold.”
In a study by Harvard University scientists, concerns were raised for a potential collision with Earth.
In the study, it said: “The consequences, should the hypothesis turn out to be correct, could potentially be dire for humanity, and would possibly require defensive measures to be undertaken.”
The study titled ‘Is the Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Alien Technology?’ analyzed the movement patterns of 3I/ATLAS and hypothesized that the object could be ‘technological, and possibly hostile’.
As for the origins of the comet, there's still some major uncertainty among the NASA experts.
3I/ATLAS’s extreme velocity relative to our Sun confirms it has likely been travelling through the cosmos for billions of years.
As the object passed planets, stars, and nebulae during its journey, gravitational interactions continuously accelerated it through the ‘slingshot effect’.
This process means the longer an object spends drifting through space, the faster it becomes, which explains how 3I/ATLAS achieved its record-breaking speed.
At this point, we will have to wait and see what happens in November or early December.
“By far the most likely outcome will be that 3I/ATLAS is a completely natural interstellar object, probably a comet, and the authors await the astronomical data to support this likely origin,” the study concluded.