Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb has cowritten a research paper speculating whether the comet 3I/ATLAS is in fact "hostile" alien technology.

"We should put all possibilities on the table that it's a rock, a comet, or something else until we get the evidence, the data that will tell us what it is," Loeb said in an interview with WBZ-TV.

Its path through space will take it between the orbits of Earth and Mars before it heads back out toward interstellar space again. When it was discovered by NASA’s ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) on July 1,