It pays to wait.

I'm a space junkie.  Ever since I was a kid obsessed with the Apollo moon missions (and Star Trek), I've kept an eye open to all news about space.  Voyager, the space shuttles, ISS, Mars landers, etc.  

 

Back in my day, I bought it all - we had "In Search Of" (hosted by none other than Mr. Spock!) finding big foot, ancient civilizations, UFO's and SPACE ALIENS!!!  Nirvana for a preteen with a wild imagination!  Grainy photos of Bigfoot roaming the Rockies, the intrinsic stone buildings of Machu Picchu, the enigma of Easter Island and blurry photos of UFO's along with EYE-WITNESS accounts of being abducted.  

And who can forget that PINNACLE of FACTS, the "Weekly World News", a MUST READ in the 1980's office!  It was, after all, "The World's Only Reliable Newspaper"!  Said so on the cover!

Today, we went from the Deep State and QAnon conspiracy theorists (who knew that would be a job requirement these days?) to AI generated garbage that the masses eat up as absolute fact (I miss the Weekly World News).

Enter 3I/ATLAS. Since it blasted bast Mars and we were able to finally see some images of it, every YouTube conspiracy theorist, thanks to a nod from Physicist, Avi Loeb who loves to say "Well... could be something other than a rock hurdling at s from space..", the conspiracy theorists have glomed onto "It's an ALIEN SPACE CRAFT!", and we get flooded with this...

I tend not watch those channels on YouTube. On the matter of 3I/ATLAS though, I scanned through. There are a handful of the foil-hat brigade all pushing the same content (3I/ATLAS is of interest to me, so I will scan whatever I can to find something fact-based).  Finally, the ONE source I do follow, NASA, posted an update - this time, debunking the latest "video" posted showing "3I/ATLAS is ALIVE!"

News flash: 3I/ATLAS is just an interstellar comet.  No space ship (for as much I wished for, please, we'll take you to our leader!), no space-going amoeba, no alien probe. Just a rock moving through space. 

And in this case, to 3I/ATLAS, my closing is appropriate - 

Onward!

Rade