The controversy surrounding the 3I/ATLAS comet has erupted again. The renowned astrophysicist Avi Loeb from Harvard accused NASA of "softening" the images of the interstellar object to make it look like an ordinary comet. According to the scientist, the space agency may be preventing the public from asking uncomfortable questions about a possible non-natural origin.
Loeb claimed that the processing applied to the photos of the object erases any detail that could point to something other than a traditional comet.
Avi Loeb's accusation
Loeb once again found himself at the center of the scientific debate. In his role as director of the Galileo Project, he keeps that astronomy relies too heavily on editing routines that "limit the interpretation of rare phenomena."
His main complaint is that brightness and contrast adjustments, as well as techniques like stacking, could be hiding anomalies in the object's shape. For him, if there were defined edges or unusual structures, these methods could erase them before the public sees them.
