Professor Rages at NASA's "Deceptive" Press Conference on Mysterious Interstellar Object

"During the livestreamed event, NASA brass took pains to "address the rumors," with associate administrator Amit Kshatriya vehemently denying a theory championed by Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb that we could be looking at an alien spacecraft coming to visit from a different star system. "This object is a comet," Kshatriya said. "It looks and behaves like a comet, and all evidence points towards it being a comet.""

"The announcement appears to have angered Loeb. In a blog post, the astronomer criticized NASA for repeating the "official mantra that 3I/ATLAS is a natural comet," arguing that "there was no big news." He quoted British author Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, that "there is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact" - effectively accusing NASA of misleadingly and prematurely discrediting his far-fetched theory. The tense back-and-forth highlights a fascinating discussion over what's deemed acceptable in scientific discourse - and what isn't."

"NASA showed off an image of 3I/ATLAS taken by the HiRISE camera attached to its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the release of which was delayed by the government shutdown. It shows a "fuzzy white ball," per Kshatriya, contrasted against the blackness of outer space. Loeb argued that the image, as well as ultraviolet readings from NASA's MAVEN spacecraft, only added "slightly to what we already learned this summer" through observations from NASA's Hubble and James Webb space telescopes."

NASA released new images of interstellar object 3I/ATLAS after a government shutdown. Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya stated the object looks and behaves like a comet and that all evidence points to a comet. Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb criticized the swift dismissal of alternative hypotheses, called the "official mantra" uninformative, and warned that obvious facts can be deceptive. NASA presented a HiRISE image showing a "fuzzy white ball" and cited MAVEN ultraviolet readings. Loeb argued those data added only slightly to earlier Hubble and James Webb observations. The exchange exposes tensions over which hypotheses are acceptable in scientific discourse.

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