A scientist has warned that the interstellar visitor moving closer to Earth could be a 'Trojan Horse,' where a technological object masquerades as a comet.
The Harvard professor, who has been monitoring 3I/ATLAS since its discovery in July, said Wednesday that there is a 30 to 40 percent chance the object 'does not have a fully natural origin.'
Avi Loeb admitted that his ranking could change after new data comes in over the next few months, including observations next month from a spacecraft en route to Jupiter and when 3I/ATLAS comes 167 miles within Earth in December.
'We have no idea of the amount of traffic of extraterrestrial probes in the vicinity of the Solar system,' he said in a blog post.
'Given the uncertainty, it would be prudent to collect as much data as possible on interstellar objects from all directions and assess the level of risk based on that data.'
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