NASA officials tried to shut down weeks of online theories on Wednesday, insisting that an interstellar object passing through the solar system was a comet despite a wave of claims that it might be an alien craft.
The agency had stayed silent during the recent U.S. government shutdown, leaving a vacuum that fueled speculation about the object known as 3I Atlas.
During an hour-long press conference at the Goddard ******* e Flight Center, officials said the object’s behavior matched a standard comet and that the data gave them no reason to think otherwise.
They said the theories that spread o