NATIONWIDE — ASTRONOMERS ARE WATCHING in fascination as massive interstellar object 3I/ATLAS has accelerated due to unexplained “non-gravitational” forces as it approaches the sun. The unusual behavior of the super-fast, ancient object, which has changed color several times and exhibits a composition not usual for natural comets including a gas plume of only 4% water by mass, has prompted somewhat tongue-in-cheek speculation by Harvard’s Avi Loeb, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, that 31/ATLAS may be alien in origin.

While Loeb has received flak from other scientists about what they consider a fringe hypothesis , he says that exploring the possibility is an “interesting exercise in its own right and is f

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