What is 3I/Atlas? Understanding the ominous object heading towards our solar system

So by now you must be aware that something ominous is approaching our solar system on a clear path towards Earth at an astronomical speed and in a way that is "not natural" and puzzling the scientific community.

It is called 3I/Atlas, which is bigger than Mount Everest and is moving at a speed of 209 000 kph, and has no tail, a telltale sign astronomers say distinguishes it from a comet.

"The Independent" reports that the object is hurtling our way but will veer closer to Mars than Earth, keeping a safe distance from both. It was 446 million km away when photographed by the Hubble space telescope a couple of weeks ago, after first being picked up by a telescope in Chile.

This visitor is bigger, faster and behaves differently from the two previous visitors to our galaxy -  Oumuamua and Borisov - and is shielded behind the sun as it hurtles in our general direction.

Professor Avi Loeb of Harvard University has authored a scientific paper on the massive object, even creating a scale from zero to 10 to classify it, with zero indicating a natural body and 10 signifying alien-made.

He gives 3I/Atlas a four on his scale, and has called for a global treaty on what to do next, should it be an alien craft from a galaxy far, far away.

And while scientists scrabble to make sense of the intergalactic visitor - only the third recorded so far - retrospectively glancing back at their records, making mathematical predictions and using every bit of tech at their disposal to catch a glimpse of it - 3I/Atlas has set off a wave of terror, amusement and stupefying theories from netizens who have all of a sudden become experts in extraterrestrials and interplanetary craft.

Some have even recalled the prophetic words of the late Bulgarian mystic, Baba Vanga, who predicted that 2025 would be the year aliens make contact with Earth.

Journalist Jeremy Corbell told "New York Post" that he believes news about the unknown object is a bare-faced lie designed to make us truly believe it, as a distraction from something even bigger, after months of speculation about the fast-moving object and other so-called UFO sightings in recent months.

Some speculate that the Juno space probe that is scoping out Jupiter could be diverted to intercept the space rock before it crashes to Earth.

Then there's the former CIA officer John Ramirez, who posits that the US government has known about the visitor and that aliens are going to show up, possibly in 2027, and that all these UFO sightings are preparing us so that we don't panic.

But who exactly is panicking?

Not Kela Holifield, who dropped a post on Facebook saying we only have ourselves to blame for sending out radio signals since the 1930s, ramping up to the 1970s when our "universal attention-seeking" went into hyperdrive with what she called a "cosmic mixtape" that included recordings of Beethoven and Chuck Berry's "Johnny be Goode".

That "outreach" resulted in a radio signal being bounced back to Earth a few months later that was too precise, too "intelligent" to be a natural phenomenon.

"We've been intergalactically drunk-dialling the aliens for decades and now we're all surprised," she posted.

While she's just a layperson, she's articulating exactly what the late, renowned British theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Steven Hawking, warned us about sending signals into deep space. You never know who or what is out there and what their intentions might be.

Separating science from science fiction

But before you become filled with dread or elated anticipation - depending on how you view the prospect of aliens making landfall - it is important to separate facts from fiction.

It is a fact that it is being observed by both the Hubble telescope and the James Webb telescope as global scientists try to make sense of its origin, chemical makeup, its trajectory and where it is likely going.

But it is fiction that it is "hiding" behind the sun. That's just the arc that it is taking.

It is also a fact that the pictures released by NASA are real images relayed to Earth by Webb Ellis

But the images accompanying articles on the oblong object, some with windows or lights emitting from it, are the works of human imagination or Artificial Intelligence, so don't be fooled.

And if you're one of those people who say they'd gladly be abducted by aliens rather than put up with the sheer madness that life has become on the Blue Planet, this could be just what you've been waiting for.