Nine Reasons This Scientist Is Suspicious the Object Screaming Past the Sun Is a City-Sized Alien Spacecraft
Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb has argued at length that 3I/ATLAS, the third interstellar object ever detected and now screaming through the solar system at incredible speed, may be a massive alien spacecraft, many kilometers long.
While there is broad agreement in the scientific community that we are looking at a comet composed largely of carbon dioxide ice, Loeb argues that the object has many unusual properties that lead him to suspect it is something even more exotic.
Loeb on his blog outlines nine “anomalies”‘, he says, supports his eyebrow-raising hypothesis that ‘we might be looking at something.’alien mothershipThis may be releasing “mini drones” as it passes behind the Sun – although we accept that the most likely explanation is that 3I/ATLAS is merely a “comet of natural origin”.
1. Its Orbit is Closely Aligned with the Planets in the Solar System
Loeb follows the mysterious visitor’s course. only drops below five degrees The Earth’s path around the Sun, or the ecliptic plane. He argues that there is only a 0.2 percent chance of this happening.
2. He Visited Many Planets
In addition to its close alignment with the ecliptic plane, 3I/ATLAS’s arrival time puts it on a course that passes just past Mars and Jupiter (both worlds of interest). own scientists In the search for life beyond Earth – Loeb’s “Extraordinary fine-tuning of the object’s path.”
Earlier this month, the object passed close enough to Mars for two European Space Agency spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet to take pictures of it. It is expected to come within just 33.3 million miles of Jupiter in March 2026, which could allow NASA’s Juno spacecraft to intercept it as well. Loeb argues.
3. A Tail Grew Anti-Grow
Astronomers also observed that 3I/ATLAS has grown a second tail that appears to point in the direction of the Sun.
Many other comets have been observed to develop an “anti-tail”. optical illusion It is caused by our relative position as we pass between the Earth and the Sun. However, Loeb argues that the second tail of 3I/ATLAS is an outlier.
“This anomalous anti-tail, which is not a result of geometric perspective, has never been reported before for comets in the solar system,” Loeb said. wrote.
“The ice pieces evaporate after a while, but larger pieces can travel great distances due to the increased mass loss on the side facing the Sun,” Loeb said. Futurism in an email earlier this month.
4. Looks Magnificent
Accordingly Loeb’s calculations“diameter of the solid density core, [3.1 miles]A measurement he deduced from an estimated mass of over “33 billion tons.”
This makes it “three to five times larger” than ‘Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov; these are the only two other interstellar objects to have wobbled through our solar system so far—which raises a puzzling statistical question: Why haven’t we observed much smaller interstellar objects?
“Given the limited reserve of heavy elements, we should have discovered around a hundred thousand interstellar objects on the 0.1 kilometer 1I/’Oumuamua scale before finding 3I/ATLAS, but we had previously detected only two interstellar objects,” he argued. September blog post.
5. Nickel-Iron Ratios Are Unusual
Scientists found that 3I/ATLAS showed “extreme abundances of nickel and iron” in the gas cloud, making it a significant outlier compared to 2I/Borisov and other more familiar solar system comets.
“At the distances where comets are observed, the temperature is too low to evaporate silicate, sulfur and metallic grains containing nickel and iron atoms,” an international team of astronomers wrote. article that has not yet been peer-reviewed. “Therefore, the presence of nickel and iron atoms in the comet coma is extremely puzzling.”
Loeb argues that the findings may indicate the existence of “industriously produced nickel alloys.”
6. Its feather is mostly made of carbon dioxide ice
By examining data from the History of the Universe Spectro-Photometer, Reionization Epoch, and Ice Explorer (SPHEREx), researchers concluded that 3I/ATLAS’s coma surrounding its core appears to be only four percent water by mass and carries a much higher percentage of carbon dioxide gas than other comets.
While Loeb claimed that this made the object an anomaly, scientists argued the opposite.
“The fact that SPHEREx found very large amounts of evaporated carbon dioxide gas around 3I/ATLAS told us that it could be like a normal solar system comet,” said Johns Hopkins University astronomer Carey Lisse. said space.com last month.
Separately preprint paperAn international research team suggested that the object may contain “ices exposed to higher levels of radiation than Solar System comets” or “may have formed close to the CO2 ice line in the parent protoplanetary disk.”
7. Highly Negatively Polarized
The mysterious object also showed “extreme negative polarization,” as detailed in one article. September articlemaking it a significant outlier.
“The combination of low rotation angle and extreme negative polarization is unprecedented among comets and asteroids, marking 3I/ATLAS as the first object with such polarimetric behavior that represents a known and previously unobserved population,” Loeb wrote. blog post.
The findings suggest that trans-Neptunian objects have more in common with minor planets and other small objects orbiting the Sun beyond the orbit of Neptune, according to the authors of the September research paper.
8. May Be Behind the Famous “WOW! Signal”
Loeb went so far as to suggest that 3I/ATLAS may have emitted the “Wow! Signal,” a highly unusual narrowband radio signal detected by Ohio State University’s Big Ear radio telescope in 1977. The signal sparked widespread excitement about the possibility of coming from an extraterrestrial entity and remained a mystery for decades.
Loeb claims that “3I/ATLAS has a 0.6 percent probability of coming within nine degrees from a direction that coincides with the radio ‘Wow! Signal.'”
9. Much Bluer Than the Sun
Loeb initially listed only eight reasons why he suspected the true nature of 3I/ATLAS. But this week, as 3I/ATLAS approached its closest point to the Sun, or perihelion, scientists observed a “rapid increase” in its brightness, and Loeb wrote that it appeared “clearly bluer than the Sun.” new blog post.
This is a “very surprising” finding, according to the astronomer. “The dust is expected to exaggerate scattered sunlight, and the surface of the object is expected to be cooler than the 5,800 degrees Kelvin in the Sun’s photosphere, resulting in a redder color than the Sun.”
“We must therefore add the blue color at perihelion as the ninth anomaly to the list of unexpected features of this strange interstellar object,” he wrote. “Is it using a power source hotter than the Sun?”
If it smells like a comet…
It is debatable whether these nine “anomalies” outlined by Loeb come together to form a convincing enough argument that 3I/ATLAS is “technological” in nature.
Tom Statler, NASA’s leading scientist on small objects in the solar system. said Guard Last month, there was plenty of evidence that we were looking at a rare visitor in the form of a natural comet from another star system.
“It looks like a comet,” he said. “It does comet-like things. In almost every respect, it is very, very similar to comets as we know them.”
Statler concluded at the time: “It’s a comet.”
Meanwhile, Loeb argued on his blog that “we need to collect as much data as possible to understand the nature of this anomalous object.”
“The impact of alien technology could be huge, and so we must take this possibility seriously,” he added. “Our biggest rocket, [SpaceX’s] Starship is a hundred times smaller than 3I/ATLAS, so if 3I/ATLAS is technological, its senders will have capabilities that far exceed our technologies.”
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