JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
There is an unusual alliance recently between space geeks, sci-fi fans and the high-profile personalities Kim Kardashian and Joe Rogan. They all share an interest in a newly discovered interstellar object. NPR's Katia Riddle reports on the celebrity comet called 3I/ATLAS.
KATIA RIDDLE, BYLINE: Scientists discovered 3I/ATLAS earlier this year. It's a visitor from another solar system, traveling much faster than the local comets that orbit our sun. The composition of 3I/ATLAS suggests its home is somewhere much colder than ours. But exactly what these unique features tell us, that's been a matter of speculation. Here is podcast host Joe Rogan in a recent interview.
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JOE ROGAN: Initially, a lot of people were dismissing your concerns, and they were saying that this object is nothing but a comet, and it's very normal. But then as it got closer and as we got more data, it seems like you're correct.
RIDDLE: Rogan is interviewing Avi Loeb, an astrophysicist at Harvard. Loeb is responsible for a lot of the recent frenzy around 3I/ATLAS. In media appearances like this, he's made grandiose suggestions about the comet, even implying that it could be carrying alien life-forms.
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AVI LOEB: This is different than other scientific matters. And the intelligence agencies know very well that events with very small probability have to be considered seriously because they have - they could have major implications.
RIDDLE: In an interview, Loeb maintained the claim that 3I/ATLAS could be evidence of intelligent beings from another planet.
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LOEB: So all I'm saying is, let's leave this possibility on the table, collect as much data as possible out of curiosity and figure this out.
RIDDLE: His theories have ricocheted around the internet. Kim Kardashian recently said on the platform X, quote, "Wait. What's the tea on 3I/ATLAS?" This prompted NASA administrator Sean Duffy to respond, great question. He then explained that 3I/ATLAS has, quote, "no aliens and does not present a threat to human life on Earth." Some in the astronomy world have reacted to Loeb's claims more vehemently.
DAVID JEWITT: Honestly, I think it's a way to get attention, and it's very, very successful.
RIDDLE: David Jewitt is an astronomer at UCLA who also studies 3I/ATLAS.
JEWITT: I think it's an interesting object, but it's a comet. It's not an alien spaceship.
RIDDLE: There are some amazing things about 3I, says Jewitt. For one thing, we've only seen three objects that have come from outside our solar system. He calls them interstellar interlopers. Jewitt says these kinds of objects are whizzing around all the time. It's just that we can see them now, thanks to more powerful telescopes.
JEWITT: And if we can figure out something about them, then maybe we can figure out something about some other place in the galaxy that we have really no other way to access.
RIDDLE: Another thing, says Jewitt, it's likely very old, like 8 or 10 billion years old.
JEWITT: So it's been drifting out there for an incredibly long time, longer than we've been around, longer than our sun has been around. And that in itself is fairly amazing.
RIDDLE: Jewitt says there are likely many more of these interstellar interlopers to study in the future.
JEWITT: It's a staggering number of objects floating around, the presence of which we've only just started to infer.
RIDDLE: He's glad that people are interested in space. He also thinks it's important to maintain skepticism and rigor in public discussions of science.
JEWITT: I think you have to pay close attention to the data and to what you see, and you have to be honest. And I think that applies to everybody.
RIDDLE: Among other reasons to pursue truth, he points out, sometimes it's more wild than anything we humans can imagine. Katia Riddle, NPR News.
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