Optimists will be disappointed, pessimists will be relieved, and realists will be unsurprised that 3I/ATLAS came as close as it was going to get to Earth on Friday (170 million miles) and is now, as comets are wont to do, speeding away. In the extraordinarily unlikely event that it was some sort of alien craft, its best moment for getting in touch or wiping us out has passed.

Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb has, as he did with Oumuamua, our first identified interstellar visitor, been speculating that, based on some anomalous qualities, 3I/ATLAS might be of alien origin. Undaunted by the no-show, and still intrigued by some of the object’s unusual characteristics, he has written an article for Medium........

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