A mysterious comet named 3I/ATLAS, spotted in July 2025 streaking through our Solar System from deep space, is likely not an 'alien spaceship' but a visitor from the main disc of the Milky Way, according to Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb. His claim, based on the object's galactic trajectory and unusual chemistry, has added a fresh twist to the debate over what 3I/ATLAS actually is and where it originated.
The news followed confirmation by astronomers that 3I/ATLAS, also catalogued as C/2025 N1, is only the third known interstellar object to enter the Solar System. Its discovery by the ATLAS survey in Chile immediately drew comparisons with ʻOumuamua and comet 2I/Borisov, the first two recognised interstellar visitors. Unlike those earlier cases, where the debate quickly centred on exotic explanations versus more mundane ones, 3I/ATLAS has opened a more complicated puzzle, grounded in the hard data of orbital dynamics and chemistry rather than science-fiction speculation.
