Though this hunt came up empty, the fact that 3I/ATLAS is only the third known object found in the solar system after entering from interstellar space (the others being 1I/'Oumuamua, seen in 2017, and 2I/Borisov, detected in 2019) means that it is still an object of great fascination, albeit a natural one.

Astronomer Avi Loeb suspects this interstellar visitor is a piece of alien technology, citing its unusual traits and the government's refusal to share data.

The CIA told Greenewald in a formal response to his FOIA that it will “neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of records” related to the object — a non-answer that could be interpreted in strikingly different ways.

It is unclear whether a [3I/ATLAS] would transmit radio signals … such signals would take tens of thousands of years to cross the Milky Way Galaxy,” argues Harvard