A mesmerising time-lapse clip that swept across X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, purporting to depict the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS hurtling through space, has been definitively exposed as a mislabelled microscope sequence of a paramecium, a single-celled organism common in freshwater environments.
In a dramatic reversal of viral momentum, fact-checkers have confirmed that the claim is false, debunking the clip and cautioning viewers: not everything that looks like a cosmic wanderer is born in the stars.
