Harvard scientist warns interstellar object blasting toward Earth ‘may come to save – or destroy us’

A Harvard astronomer is suggesting that an interstellar object nearing Earth could be an engineered object — rather than a natural one — after making similar claims in in 2023 and 2017.

Avi Loeb, the chair of Harvard’s astronomy department, told CNN on Thursday that the 31/ATLAS interstellar object detected by the Deep Random Survey remote telescope in Chile could have an alien origin.

“The brightness of the object implies a diameter of 20 km, and there is not enough rocky material in interstellar space to deliver such a giant object per decade,” Loeb said.

He noted that it takes “10,000 years for that much mass to arrive to the inner part of the solar system.”

Loeb also said that the object will be closest to the Earth when our planet is on the opposite side of the sun, meaning we won’t be able to actually see it.

“We won’t be able to observe it, but that’s the perfect time for it to maneuver, and so we just need to watch it,” he said.

He went on to say he thinks there’s a chance that the object could be engineered rather than naturally occurring.

“I’m not saying it’s an alien technology,” Loeb said. “I’m just saying it doesn’t look like a very common thing, and actually, the glow that is around this object, usually for comets, you see a trailing tail behind the object and here the glow from the Hubble Space Telescope image is actually in front of the object.”

The astronomer said that “we’ve never seen such a thing” and noted that a comet wouldn’t “have glow in front of it.”

He argued that it’s prudent for humanity to examine any interstellar objects entering our solar system, just to be sure they’re harmless.

“[31/ATLAS] may come to save us or destroy us,” he said. “We’d better be ready for both options and check whether all interstellar objects are rocks.”

31/ATLAS made news in July after scientists confirmed it originated outside of our solar system, making it one of only three known interstellar objects discovered in our little slice of space.

The object is massive, with scientists estimating it is more than 12 miles wide.

Loeb theorizing a more enigmatic origin of the object isn’t exactly off-brand for him. In 2023 he made headlines after he and a team recovered a meteor that fell into the Pacific Ocean. He claimed at the time that an analysis found previously unseen metal alloys in the rock, suggesting at very least an origin outside of our solar system, but other astrophysicists were skeptical of those claims.

Back in 2017, Oumuamua, a long, rod-like object, became the first known interstellar object detected in our solar system.

Loeb released a paper in 2021 exploring the idea that the strange object — which about the length of a football field but only as thick as a common cigar — was possibly using a “light sail” that captures the sun’s energy as a means of propulsion.

He was essentially suggesting that Oumuamua could have been crafted by aliens or some other intelligence.

In 2023, researchers published a study that found the object’s strange orbit and apparent propulsion was actually achieved through a mechanism found in many icy comets. Essentially, hydrogen was being released from the object as it was warmed by the sun’s heat.

“For a comet several kilometers across, the outgassing would be from a really thin shell relative to the bulk of the object, so both compositionally and in terms of any acceleration, you wouldn’t necessarily expect that to be a detectable effect,” UC Berkeley assistant professor of chemistry Jennifer Bergner said at the time. “But because Oumuamua was so small, we think that it actually produced sufficient force to power this acceleration.”