Humans have 116 days until ‘alien spaceship’ reaches Earth as ‘it could save or destroy us’
A Harvard professor claims an unexplained object flying towards Earth might be an alien spacecraft – and it could arrive in just 116 days. Professor Loeb has been closely watching a foreign object hurtling through space and heading towards our planet. Unsure of the interstellar visitor, scientists dubbed the object 3I/ATLAS and have been going back and forth with several theories on what the object could be.
Perhaps a comet, or space matter. However, Loeb previously said the object could be the product of “technological design”. Loeb compared the object to the novel Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. In it, a foreign object in space happened to be an alien spacecraft.
It was first discovered on July 1, and if the object is an alien ship, Loeb warns that it could be carrying a probe or even a weapon. He predicts that such a vehicle would reach Earth between November 21 and December 5, 2025.Loeb has explained that its position would be ideal for deploying probes to habitable planets.
He explained: “It could come to save us or to destroy us. We better be prepared for both possibilities and verify that all interstellar objects are just rocks.”
This so-called ‘interstellar’ object is just the third to have ever been spotted in our solar system. 3I/ATLAS is currently heading towards the inner solar system at 135,000 miles per hour. According to NASA, this means the object will reach its closest point to the sun the night before Halloween, on October 30. They added that we shouldn’t worry, as this is still 130 million miles away.
However, due to its distance, boffins can’t accurately measure its size and instead look at reflecting lights to make a prediction. Either way, they’re sure the size is quite significant—around 20-24km to be exact. This is up to 200 times larger than the 100-metre-long interstellar object last detected. Professor Loeb is confused by this, and suggested the rarity of seeing a large object is enough to confuse experts.
He previously told the Mail: “It’s not like these objects are floating around in all directions; this object was aiming to get to the inner solar system.” He questioned why it was particularly sent in the direction of our solar system.
But not all boffins agree with him. Chris Lintott, an astronomer at the University of Oxford, has dismissed his claims, calling them “absolute nonsense”.
He told Live Science that the theory about an alien probe is an “insult to the exciting work that is being done to understand this object”.
NASA and the European Space Agency labelled the object an interstellar comet. Loeb has suggested this is the simplest and most likely explanation, but suggested there is room for more research with a chance – even a small one – it could be a spaceship.