Mundane wayward space snowball, or extraterrestrial visitor?

Astronomers believe that our solar system's latest and only third ever confirmed interstellar visitor, 3I/ATLAS, is almost certainly a comet.

But lingering questions about the object means it's not yet an open and shut case. Amid that uncertainty, famed Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb is pushing the possibility that the interstellar interloper is an "extraterrestrial artifact" — perhaps even an "alien mothership" — here to menace or observe us. Which, though it sounds scary, could be interpreted as a good thing.

"The discovery of an extraterrestrial artifact would reset our priorities to explore the real estate beyond Earth instead of just focusing on terrestrial conflicts," Loeb wrote in a recent blog post. "Humanity desperately

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