Who doesn’t love a good extraterrestrial story? Tales of invasion, adventure, and even unlikely friendships are commonplace in literature, movies, and video games. But one academic’s assertions that an interstellar body hurtling toward our solar system is actually a massive alien spaceship has people worried that the situation is nothing short of a planetary emergency. So much so that NASA felt the need to address the matter. 

Buzz that the 3I/ATLAS interstellar body was an alien spaceship has prompted NASA to set the record straight

Harvard professor Avi Loeb captured the attention of the media when he issued a dire warning. In short, Loeb warned that a massive interstellar object, 3I/ATLAS, might be an alien spaceship. Worse yet, its path will bring it close to Mars next month. Understandably, the claim had folks worried.

But before you barricade yourself in your basement with a foil hat, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has something to say on the subject. “It looks like a comet,” Thomas Statler, head of NASA’s Solar System Small Bodies, said on the subject.

“It does comet things. It very, very strongly resembles, in just about every way, the comets that we know,” Statler added in a statement to The Guardian. Breathing easier yet?

“It has some interesting properties that are a little bit different from our solar system comets, but it behaves like a comet,” Statler said. “And so the evidence is overwhelmingly pointing to this object being a natural body. It’s a comet.”

Loeb, on the other hand, argued that the comet was artificially made. And if that wasn’t enough, he made some rather dark assessments about its mission. He called the alien spaceship’s presence “dire” for humanity. 

In addition to that grisly remark, Loeb said that while we should take defensive measures, they may prove “futile” in the face of solar system-sailing aliens. But as Statler said, if it acts like a comet and looks like a comet, it’s a comet.