When the interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS got closest to Earth on December 19, it left more than just a green glow behind. It left behind a lot of questions that sound like the plot of a sci-fi movie. While most of us were getting ready for the holidays, Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb was thinking about a much darker possibility: could this cosmic guest be raining down poisonous debris on our planet as it passes by?
The ATLAS survey telescope in Chile found the object on July 1, 2025, and since then, scientists have been very interested in it because of its strange behaviour and unusual chemical makeup. Loeb, a scientist who is never afraid to look into the strange, recently asked if any of the material left behind by the visitor—the third interstellar object ever found after 'Oumuamua and Borisov—could actually reach our atmosphere.
