The question sounds ripped straight from a sci-fi blockbuster like Arrival or 2001: A Space Odyssey, yet it became a very real source of furious, months-long online debate. The cosmic object at the centre of this drama is the interstellar comet known prosaically to astronomers as 3I/ATLAS.
While official science now confidently classifies it as a natural celestial interloper — only the third known object of its kind to enter our system from deep space — a significant portion of the internet has already crowned it the latest piece of irrefutable proof that aliens are here.
