NASA’s big reveal of the mysterious interstellar object has been slammed as a joke, with many claiming the space agency is covering up what they really know.
The newest images of the visitor, known as 3I/ATLAS, were released by the space agency on Wednesday.
However, the pictures, which debuted during a press conference on YouTube, were largely blurry and only showed a dot seen from a distance.
Moreover, NASA refuted any claims that the object, which had made unexpected maneuvers that dumbfounded experts, is anything other than a large space rock.
The agency’s associate administrator Amit Kshatriya declared: ‘3I/ATLAS is a comet.’
The controversial event quickly sent social media into a frenzy, with many alleging the space agency was hiding what they actually knew and withholding clearer images.
‘What a waste of time! NASA is lying so bad. They are all so scripted. The gaslighting is off the charts,’ one person posted on X.
‘You have lost all credibility with this blurry hogwash photo. Anyone over there who cares about Earth should dump the entire unedited image archive to Wikileaks,’ another social media user wrote.
NASA’s HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was expected to provide one of the best images of 3I/ATLAS to date, since it was able to view the object from just 19 million miles away.
However, the image shown on Wednesday was a fuzzy, black-and-white picture that did not have any definition.
In fact, the clearest and most detailed image presented by NASA did not actually show the interstellar object. Instead, it showed a color image of the chemical elements being released into space by 3I/ATLAS.
‘It was a foggy London day when the NASA Mars orbiter took this photo haha,’ one person joked on social media.
The space agency also pushed back on claims that 3I/ATLAS was displaying any behaviors that were unnatural for a typical comet.
Previously, Harvard professor Avi Loeb had already discovered at least 11 anomalies that scientists have yet to fully explain, including a cometary tail pointing in the wrong direction, the object turning blue near the sun, and course changes that defy gravity.
However, the NASA team dismissed any irregularities being recorded as a byproduct of the object coming from a distant solar system likely composed of a completely different chemical makeup than our own.
Nicky Fox, the associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate added: ‘We certainly haven’t seen any techosignatures or anything from it that would lead us to believe it was anything other than a comet.’
‘It’s gonna look different because it didn’t come from our solar system,’ Fox added.
The quick dismissal of the alternative possibilities surrounding 3I/ATLAS only fueled the speculation online that NASA was trying to bury the subject of alien life.
‘This is s***. Tell the truth once and for all to all mankind!!’ one frustrated viewer posted.
‘Seems like they are trying really hard to convince us that it’s just a rock,’ another person said.
When Fox was directly asked if NASA scientists had investigated the possibility that 3I/ATLAS could be an alien craft, the associate administrator avoided giving a clear answer to the question.
‘We love all of the different science and all of the different hypotheses into what these things can be,’ Fox replied.
‘NASA= NEVER A STRAIGHT ANSWER,’ an X user posted during the press event.
‘I should be mad about the NASA event being an absolute flop but I actually just can’t stop laughing,’ another viewer wrote.
Since its discovery in July, the majority of scientists and astronomers have agreed with NASA’s assessment, calling 3I/ATLAS a normal comet with a slightly different chemical arrangement than space rock which formed in this solar system.
Loeb, a physicist and head of the Galileo Project, a scientific research group looking for signs of extraterrestrial life, has been the most prominent voice disputing the comet theory.
He contended that those in the scientific community who have dismissed the more extraordinary possibilities are more concerned with being right and avoiding criticism than alerting the public to a potentially world-changing event.
‘Here we are talking about a potential for something that could affect humanity in the future in a dramatic way, and so you shouldn’t apply the same approach of being as conservative as possible,’ Loeb told the Daily Mail in October.
‘I don’t want to be their therapist, but they’re trying to obviously protect their reputation, not take risks, and also pretend that they know the answer in advance.’
