The mysterious interstellar object 3I/ATLAS is just weeks away from reaching its closest point to Earth: it’s expected to pass within just 170 million miles of our home planet on December 19, giving astronomers an unprecedented opportunity to take a closer look as it whizzes past. “Overall, 3I shows characteristics typical of weakly active outer Solar System comets, despite its interstellar origin,” the researchers wrote in their paper. “For a technological object, the direction of the pulsing jet could be arbitrary and not necessarily pointing towards the Sun,” he wrote. “This heartbeat pattern should have been apparent in a series of well-calibrated snapshots of the coma over several days but none was systematically studied in the published literature,” Loeb wrote. “A movie showing the periodic brightening of the jets around 3I/ATLAS over several days can reveal whether the jets are natural or technological based on the orientation of the heartbeat pattern relative to the Sun.”More on 3I/ATLAS: Professor Rages at NASA’s “Deceptive” Press Conference on Mysterious Interstellar Object