‘Alien battleship’ to reach its closest point to Earth today

A scientist warned it could be a “black swan event”

An object, known as 3i/ATLAS, on Friday passed by Earth at 130,000mph and a distance of 170 million miles, which is roughly twice as far as our sun.

And a Harvard University astrophysicist hasn’t ruled out the possibility of aliens.

The mysterious object that passed by could well be an alien battleship, according to a controversial scientist.

Harvard professor Avi Loeb said that we should be on high alert and look over our heads, even if most of his peers are of the opinion that the object is in fact simply a comet.

Loeb has sparked a debate by warning that it could be a “black swan event”, which is something that’s highly unlikely but has high consequences.

“Alien technology is a potential threat because when you go on a blind date of interstellar proportions, you never know whether you have a friendly visitor as your dating partner or a serial killer,” he told Sky News.

“When there are implications to society, we must consider even an unlikely event and collect as much data as possible to convince us otherwise.”

The astrophysicist says that the object has an unusual tail, based on the images of it, and that could come from a propulsion system and that its trajectory, aligned with the orbits of planets in our solar system, was too unlikely to be by chance.

The object was first spotted in July but it has moved rapidly through the solar system. In October it passed Mars, and after coming close to Earth's orbit, flew by Jupiter before fading from view again.

However, there is no doubt that its origins are completely natural, according to American and European space agencies.

“This object is a comet. It looks and behaves like a comet. All evidence points to it being a comet”, Amit Kshatriya from NASA said.

3i/ATLAS is estimated to be around eight billion years old, according to scientists. That means it’s twice the age of our sun and solar system. Meaning it was around way, way before us.

It is considered to be a cosmic fossil left over from the formation of an unknown star in the galaxy.

And there is absolutely nothing sinister about the object, says professor Chris Lintott, an astronomer from the University of Oxford.

"It is just nonsense. It's like saying we should consider the possibility that the moon is made of cheese”, he told Sky News.

Similar claims by Loeb about a possible extraterrestrial craft were made in reference to Oumuamua, another interstellar comet that passed through our solar system in 2017.