Harvard physicist says massive interstellar object could be alien probe on 'reconnaissance mission'

Astronomers recently discovered a rare interstellar object passing through our solar system, and a Harvard physicist is sounding the alarm that its strange characteristics might indicate it's more than just a typical comet.

"Usually with comets you have a tail, a cometary tail, where dust and gas are shining, reflecting sunlight, and that's the signature of a comet," Loeb told Fox News Digital. "Here, you see a glow in front of it, not behind it."

"If you imagine objects entering the solar system from random directions, just one in 500 of them would be aligned so well with the orbits of the planets," he said.

The interstellar object, which comes from the center of the Milky Way galaxy, is also expected to pass near to Mars, Venus and Jupiter - something that is also highly improbable to happen at random, according to Loeb.

"It also comes close to each of them, with a probability of one in 20,000," he said. 

The 3I/ATLAS object will reach its closest point to our sun - about 130 million miles away - on October 30, according to NASA.

In January, seven years after SpaceX CEO Elon Musk launched a Tesla Roadster into orbit, astronomers from the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts confused it with an asteroid.

A spokesperson for NASA did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.