Harvard physicist suggests interstellar object could be alien probe: “Very peculiar”

A Harvard physicist is making waves in academic circles due to his suggestion that an interstellar object hailing from outside the solar system could be an alien probe on a “reconnaissance mission.”

Astronomers have been tracking the object, named 31/ATLAS, which was first spotted on July 1 by an asteroid terrestrial-impact last alert system (ATLAS) in Rio Hurtado, Chile.

It is only the third time such an interstellar object has been documented entering Earth’s celestial neighbourhood.

“The unusual trajectory of this object offers the possibility that it might have been designed so as to have some goals of a reconnaissance mission,” Avi Loeb says.

The suggestion from Loeb has been dismissed as “irresponsible science” by Karen Meech, a planetary astronomer at the University of Hawaii’s Institute of Astronomy.

“There’s a perfectly natural explanation for this. It is behaving like a regular comet,” she says.

Astronomers say the object poses no threat to Earth and is expected to come no closer than 240 million kilometres from the planet.