Ah, yeah, so, you know that comet we’ve all been thinking is either 100 percent for sure aliens or maybe just a slightly more interesting space rock? It might have exploded. Or not.When the interstellar object swung around the Sun in late October, it glowed brightly, spewing gas and dust. Images from British astronomers Michael Buechner and Frank Niebling showed a massive “anti-tail” nearly two million miles long, and another jet blazing toward the Sun. The object was losing up to 4.4 million pounds of material every second, far beyond what typical comets manage.Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, who has been tracking 3I/ATLUS since it was found and has been the biggest proponent of the object being of alien origin, calculated that the sunlight hitting it couldn’t account for such an intense outburst. To vaporize that much ice, the comet’s surface area would have to be 16 times larger than it appeared just months earlier. He concluded that it might have blown itself apart into at least 16 pieces. Or, in classic Loeb fashion, maybe it isn’t a comet at all and it’s actually just doing some wild alien stuff that we can’t even comprehend, man.Loeb has long floated the idea that some interstellar objects could be alien technology, propelled by engines instead of melting ice. “Technological thrusters require a much smaller mass loss in order to produce the observed jets around 3I/ATLAS,” he wrote, implying that if 3I/ATLAS wasn’t disintegrating, it might be firing its engines.Hold the phone, though. Not everyone thinks the mysterious object is a sure sign of aliens. Many scientists studying the object, such as Lowell Observatory’s Qicheng Zhang, have a far more mundane, albeit still interesting, explanation. Not only is it not aliens, he says, it’s a perfectly normal space object.“All the images I’ve seen show a fairly ordinary/healthy-looking comet,” Zhang told Live Science. “There’s no sign at all that the nucleus broke apart.”Meanwhile, the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa picked up something new: radio absorption lines from hydroxyl radicals, the byproduct of sunlight breaking down water. It’s the first radio detection of 3I/ATLAS, confirming that at least some of what’s coming off it is good old-fashioned water. That’s big news for astronomers like Auburn University’s Dennis Bodewits, who sees interstellar comets as a recipe for life from another planetary system, as they carry the ingredients of life’s chemistry.Even in supposed theoretical death, 3I/ATLAS continually refuses any kind of steadfast, neat sense of categorization. It’s a comet freak. It’s shedding far more water and carbon dioxide than it should at its distance from the Sun, and it’s doing it in a way no one quite understands.We’ll get another look soon. The object will pass close to Earth on December 19 and near Jupiter next March, where NASA’s Juno spacecraft will listen for more radio clues.The post Did Mysterious Interstellar Visitor 3I/ATLAS Explode? appeared first on VICE.