Telescopes have been tracking a mysterious, Manhattan-sized object as it hurtles through space since July and one boffin believes it could be alien technology set to strike Earth
A boffin has warned humans to take their holidays before the end of the month — because an alien attack could be imminent. Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb believes a giant mass heading Earth’s way may actually be an extraterrestrial space vehicle.
The mysterious interstellar object hurtling through our solar system, named 3I/ATLAS, was first spotted on July 1 and is thought to be a comet by most scientists. But Professor Loeb, who has been tracking the object, warned: “It may come to save us or destroy us.”
If the object is an alien craft, Prof Loeb warned it could launch a surprise attack on our planet when it reaches its closest point to the sun on October 29. He warned: “If you want to take a vacation, take it before that date. Because who knows what will happen.”
He previously predicted it could reach Earth between November 21 and December 5, based on calculations of its previous trajectory.
The massive object, which is the size of Manhattan and weighs an estimated 33 billion tonnes, travels almost twice as fast as previous interstellar visitors.
And images show it is emitting a plume which contains four grams of nickel per second with no evidence of iron, a metal alloy never before witnessed in nature and unheard of in comets.
The end result is an alloy called nickel tetracarbonyl, which has only ever been previously witnessed in human manufacturing, Prof Loeb told the New York Post.
He said: “There is only one place where that is known to exist and that is in industrially produced nickel alloys. This was never observed for any other object. This was a process that we can imagine only because it was used in industry. Never seen in comets before.”
Prof Loeb, who teaches theoretical physics at Harvard and is a director at the Center for Astrophysics, has long been adamant that something about 3I/ATLAS does not add up.
His claims have been dismissed as “nonsense on stilts” by Oxford Uni astronomer Chris Lintott, who dubbed the alien probe theory as an “insult to the exciting work going on to understand this object”.
And NASA has issued statements to reassure the public 3I/ATLAS poses no threat to the planet and will pass through the inner solar system safely.
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