Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb has urged world leaders to work together on an emergency plan in case a mysterious object heading towards the inner solar system poses a danger to Earth.

The object, named 3I/ATLAS, was first spotted on July 1 by the NASA-funded ATLAS telescope in Río Hurtado, Chile. It is only the third interstellar object ever recorded entering our solar system. While most scientists believe it is a comet, Loeb disagrees and suggests it might be an “alien mothership.”

Speaking to NewsNation, Loeb said, "I believe that we need an international organisation that will make policy decisions about such an object."

“We never discuss alien technology”

Loeb stressed that humanity often talks about threats like artificial intelligence, climate change, or asteroid impacts, but not about extraterrestrial dangers.

"We are worried about existential threats from artificial intelligence, from global climate change, from an asteroid impact, but we never discuss alien technology," he said. He believes there must be a common policy to respond to such situations, based on the object’s behaviour.

"The response has to depend on its properties and its intent. What is it doing as it comes closer to us? And it’s just like having a visitor in your backyard… it really depends on the intent of the visitor, and it’s just next door," he explained.

Why Loeb says it’s not a comet

In a Medium post, Loeb argued that several features of 3I/ATLAS suggest it is not a natural object. He says its motion and acceleration could create an illusion of a tail, and that its retrograde orbit around the Sun, moving in the opposite direction to planets, is unusual for natural space bodies.

The object is moving at 60 kilometres per second and is larger than the other two known interstellar visitors, ‘Oumuamua (2017) and 2I/Borisov (2019). Loeb claims the chances of it being a natural object are only 0.2%.

For now, astronomers worldwide are studying 3I/ATLAS to learn more before it comes closer to the Sun, but Loeb wants the world to be ready, just in case.

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