Avi Loeb

There cannot be an optical illusion under these circumstances because it was approaching both the earth and the sun roughly at the same direction.

So I'm not aware of another.

But most importantly, you should look at the response of the comet expert community to that anomaly.

They say, well, comets are strange.

We don't know.

Maybe these are dust particles that are very big, so they don't get pushed back much.

But then...

How do you scatter sunlight?

Usually you need particles that have a size of the order of the wavelength of the light that is being scattered.

That's the most efficient process.

And when you have dust particles, the ones that have sub-micrometer dimensions are dominating the scattering of sunlight.

So why in this case you will have only big ones that are not getting pushed back?

It could be fragments of ice that are scattering the sunlight that have nothing to do with dust, but those fragments of ice get evaporated, and so they don't have enough time to turn back.

I wrote two papers on that trying to explain it.

But my point is, many scientists are not curious.

You would find it surprising.

Why are they not curious?

Why are they not willing to...

to consider alternative explanations to what is commonly thought.

And it's because they're afraid of taking any risk.