Although the NASA assured that the comet 3I/ATLAS It does not represent any danger to the Earth, because its closest point to it will be about 270 million kilometers. Its irregular movement and the impossibility of seeing it directly while it passes behind the Sun gave rise to various theories.
Mainly, it is surprising that some scientists have considered the possibility that it is a phenomenon extraterrestrial. Among them, the theoretical physicist from Harvard University stands out, Avi Loeb, who refuses to rule out that the object is actually a probe or interstellar ship sent by an unknown civilization.
This discussion revived a stark warning made by the astrophysicist Stephen Hawkingbased on a striking hypothesis regarding the universe.
Stephen Hawking’s prediction
In 2010, during the documentary series Into the Universe («Inside the Universe»), the British Stephen Hawking assured that “if aliens ever visit us, The result could be similar to when Columbus arrived in America, which did not end well for the Native Americans.”
According to their analysis, in the future, a civilization capable of roaming the cosmos will probably have exhausted the resources of its own planet and look for others to colonize. Following this reasoning, some theories speculate that the 3I/ATLAS It could be an object sent by inhabitants of another world who no longer have the necessary elements to survive on their planet.
Stephen Hawking warned that an eventual alien arrival could be catastrophic. Photo: ArchiveThis is why Hawking refused to allow the famous sending of information into space with coordinates, videos or even living samples of our world, as they could reveal our state to other civilizations.
The vision of the famous scientist is related to the call “dark forest hypothesis” popularized by a Chinese writer, which we explain below.
The intriguing theory of the dark forest
The dark forest hypothesis is the idea that there are many alien civilizations throughout the universe, but they are silent and paranoid.
In this framework, it is presumed that any civilization sailing through space would encounter intelligent life from another, consider it an inevitable threat, and therefore attempt to destroy it.
Furthermore, this argument holds that civilizations continually expand over time, but the total matter of the universe remains constant, so at some point they would compete with each other for resources.
Liu Cixin, the Chinese writer who developed the dark forest theory. Photo: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 2.0)As a result, the electromagnetic spectrum would be relatively quiet, with no evidence of any intelligent extraterrestrial life.
This theory was described by the Chinese writer Liu Cixin in 2008, who stated that the galaxy would resemble «a dark forest full of armed hunters who lurk among the trees like a ghost.
What is 3I/ATLAS?
He comet 3I/ATLAS It is the third known object originating from outside our solar system that was discovered while passing through it. It is classified as interstellar because the shape of its orbital path is hyperbolic, meaning that it does not follow a closed orbital path around the Sun.
He name of the comet is very representative: The «I» indicates that it is «interstellar», and the «3» indicates that it is the third known interstellar object. The first two were 1I/Oumuamua -discovered in 2017- and 2I/Borisov -discovered in 2019-. The comet was named for its discoverers, the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) team.
