Something did fly past Earth last week, and it left a trail of uneasy questions behind it: could interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS have shed toxic material that made it all the way to us? Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb has publicly raised that possibility, framing the object as a potential 'intergalactic cyanide tablet'.
However, in the same analysis, Loeb also outlined why physics makes an actual 'poison fallout' scenario highly unlikely. His provocative question comes after telescopes detected a plume containing cyanide and hydrogen cyanide around the object as it approached the Sun.
