I didn’t want to write, I swear, only that I got too many messages, even of my best friend Zyo: “But you read this hasty story, it appears everywhere, there is also on Focus”. I told him that Focus is worth what Discovery Channel is worth, but actually the “news” of the spaceship is also spreading on social networks, Tik Tok and Instagram above all.
And then nothing, here I am, again, so much this thing is now cyclical, every few months a cosmic object that could destroy us, or, worse: it is not said that it is not artificial.
I, and whoever follows me will remind him, on the Asteroid 2024 YR4 I wrote four or five pieces, because every day he changed trajectory (or rather every day they calculated it differently), so that first he would have hit the earth in 2032, then perhaps not, then maybe yes without too much conviction, finally the moon (and there the interest was deflated, of another crater on the moon a tube he has a tube to anyone, Asteroid alarm on the moon, as if there was already a human colony).
In any case, in these days it is the turn of the interstellar comet 3i/Atlas, which someone has already renamed “alien spaceships” only because it passes near Venus, Mars and Jupiter as if it had set the galactic GPS on a panoramic tour. There is this natural tendency to believe that if something comes from space it must necessarily have an intelligence behind (always superior, man always imagines superior beings), a mysterious plan, a secret origin and in reality … it is a comet. He will only pass once in the sun system, he will never really approach the earth and does not even have a spectacular tail. Indeed, at the moment there is no significant commercial activity, no emission of gases or dust, which makes it less photogenic. It has a hyperbolic orbit, therefore it comes from outside and will come out forever, with a retrograde inclination with respect to the orbital plan, and is randomly passing, as I said, near Venus, Mars and Jupiter, as can happen in millions of orbital combinations. There are no maneuvers, neither plans nor intelligent routes, nor signs, only an ice body old billion years old that crosses our field of vision for a few weeks and beyond. If it were an asteroid of 20 km in diameter it would be very rare (the two previous interstellar objects, ‘Oumuamua and 2i/Borisov, were much smaller), yet there are not even signs of abnormal reflection, let alone changes in trajectory or visible structure. It does not emit signs, it does not flashes, it does nothing but trigger the usual ufological syndrome from alien orgasm. Sorry Guys, as my favorite philosopher would say, Chiara Ferragni, is simply what it is: a cold, natural object, probably composed of ice and rock, born in some other cloud of stellar formation, very far from here, but the silent comet does not trigger the algorithm.
So, as already happened with ‘Oumuamua, Professor Avi Loeb of the University of Harvard returns, who made his personal branding alien hypothesis, according to him 3i/Atlas could be extraterrestrial technology, perhaps a vehicle of exploration, maybe not. His study (not peer-reviewed) clearly admits it: it is a pedagogical exercise, not a factual affirmation. In the study it is said that the trajectory is interesting, that the object is great, that its inclination is low, that perhaps it could also be something, but in doubt it remains a remote possibility (“remote possibility” is the answer you will get from a scientist also asking him if there could be Freddie Mercury auction on Mercury), and as always, reality remains simpler.
In short, 3i/Atlas is a comet, he does not send us signals, he does not observe us, he does not threaten us, he will not save us, he is just going through and without even knowing that we exist.
However, while we wait for cosmic catastrophes, alien invasions or revelations from the sky, we can rest assured, as species we will destroy ourselves first alone, we are putting it all (personally I am very interested in this too, so much I will not be there).