NASA Claims it Has Finally Solved the Incomprehensible Mystery of 3I/Atlas. And it Turns Out it's ... Just a Comet.
After 3I/Atlas arrived in our corner of the galaxy, from an unknown star system in the general direction of the famous "WOW! Signal", on a journey of an unknowable trillions of miles, with a chemical composition that no known natural phenomena can create, and behaving in a way that no known law of physics can explain, it was only fair that our puny human minds were hungry for answers.
All we seemed to be hearing was that nobody knew for sure:
While some of our best and brightest brains weren't shy about sharing the hypothesis that it was made by intelligent designers, and might be here to study us. And that was among the most benign explanations given. It wasn't hard to extrapolate that 3I/Atlas was an existential threat and it's time to relax and loosen up your muscles to make the rectal probing go smoother:
And after all that, we end up with perhaps the worst conclusion of all. At least the most disappointing:
Daily Mail - Since it was first spotted in July, the object – dubbed 3I/ATLAS … [m]any scientists maintained it was merely a comet visiting us from a different solar system.
However, others – including a member of US Congress and a Harvard researcher – were convinced that the object was an alien spacecraft.
Now, NASA has released photos snapped by three of its Mars spacecraft as they passed just 18 million miles away from the object.
And unfortunately for alien hunters, the US space agency says that 3I/ATLAS is a comet.
'We want very much to find signs of life in the universe… but 3I/ATLAS is a comet,' said Amit Kshatriya, a senior NASA official, at a press conference. …
Thomas Puzia, an astrophysicist who led the team at the Chilean observatory that made the discovery, described the widespread discussion surrounding the comet as 'amazing'. …
'The facts, all of them without exception, point to a normal object that is coming from the interstellar space to us.'
He added the comet was 'very exceptional in its nature, but it's nothing that we cannot explain with physics.'
Thanks, buzzkills. Thanks for nothing.
It's not like I was rooting for the destruction of the Earth or the enslavement of the human race or anything. (Except once in a while when I'm scrolling through social media.) But I was hoping this would be something, anything, other than what it turned out to be. How 3I/Atlas went from "defying the laws of physics" to "nothing that we cannot explain with physics" in a matter of days is nothing less than a crushing disappointment.
And while I'm used to things that matter to me disappointing me - my teams, my country, the Star Wars sequel trilogy, my own life - I don't expect to be disappointed by … actual matter. By the universe itself. You'd think in the whole vast configuration of existence itself, something might slip into our view and blow our species' collective hair back. And what we get "a normal object" that just happened to be coming from a funky direction.
In space nerd terms, this is the equivalent of Ralphie Parker finding out the Little Orphan Annie Decoder Ring he waited weeks for is just a commercial for Ovaltine.
What we can still put our hopes in is the fact NASA has played fast and loose with the truth before. I believe the Moon Landings were real enough. But there's no questioning the fact they've doctored photos and conveniently "lost" recordings to cover up what the Apollo astronauts saw on the journeys. Hopefully that turns out to be the case here. Because the one thing I can't accept after all this speculation is 3I/Atlas just being a ball of rock and ice in space. Anything but that.