Is 3I\/ATLAS just a comet \u2014 or an intergalactic ark?<\/p>\n
A NASA spacecraft has discovered organic chemicals on 3I\/ATLAS, which Harvard scientist Avi Loeb claims raises the possibility that the comet is an \u201cinterstellar gardener\u201d seeding the universe with life.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs it possible that there are microbes or some forms of life on 3I\/ATLAS?\u201d Loeb told the Post while outlining his theory. \u201cIf such a rock had microbes in it, they would\u2019ve survived.\u201d<\/p>\n
Loeb was referring to findings by NASA\u2019s SPHEREx spacecraft, which scans the sky in near-infrared light to glean intel on the universe, BBC\u2019s Sky At Night Magazine reported.<\/a><\/p>\n These observations by NASA\u2019s SPHEREx show the infrared light emitted by the dust, water, organic molecules, and carbon dioxide contained within comet 3I\/ATLAS. NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/p>\n Astronomers trained the celestial observer on ATLAS to see what we could detect with December observations picking up organic molecules like methanol, cyanide and methane \u2014 potential precursors to life on Earth. <\/p>\n They noted that ATLAS\u2019 got spectacularly bright in the two months after its tour of the sun. This occurs when the sun\u2019s energy causes these interstellar snowballs to sublimate water, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide that had previously been trapped in ice deep below the surface.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are now seeing the usual range of early Solar System materials, including organic molecules, soot and rock dust, that are typically emitted by a comet,\u201d said study lead Carey Lisse of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.<\/p>\n The Deep Random Survey telescope managed to capture images of interstellar object 3I\/ATLAS (previously known as A11pl3Z) in July 2025. K Ly\/Deep Random Survey \/ SWNS<\/p>\n Phil Korngut, a SPHEREx scientist at Caltech in Pasadena, California asserted that the Sun\u2019s energy potentially released a \u201ccocktail of chemicals that haven\u2019t been exposed to space for billions of years.\u201d<\/p>\n This piqued the interest of astrophysicist Loeb, who has previously speculated that ATLAS could be an alien spacecraft pollinating the cosmos with interplanetary primordial soup.<\/a><\/p>\n 3I\/ATLAS as observed by NASA\u2019s Hubble Space Telescope on November 30. NASA<\/p>\n