3I/ATLAS is much bluer than the Sun
“The implication of alien technology would be enormous, and so we have to take this possibility seriously,” says Avi Loeb. For the well-known Harvard astronomer, everything that doesn’t have an explanation, has only one explanation: extraterrestrials. This time, he supports his suspicions on 9 “evidences”.
The well-known astronomer from Harvard University Avi Loeb has argued, since its discovery, that , the third interstellar object ever detected, currently crossing the solar system at incredible speed, it could be an enormous alien spaceship kilometers long.
Although there is a broad consensus in the scientific community we are part of before a comet consisting mostly of carbon dioxide ice, Loeb maintains that the object has many unusual properties, that fuel your suspicions that it is something even more exotic.
Avi Loeb has seen ETs all over the placeand invariably its theories and the suspicions it raises turn out to be unfounded. This was the recent case of the vibrations found by the astronomer at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, which were not signs of an alien ship; had been.
Why does Loeb then consider that it is really this time that we may be facing the visit from an extraterrestrial civilization? Explains it.
Loeb admits that the most likely explanation is that 3I/ATLAS is simply a “comet of natural origin”, but, in his article, he lists the nine “anomalies” that support their surprising hypothesis that we may be facing a “alien mothership”which may be release “mini-drones” as it passes behind the Sun.
- Trajectory closely aligned with the planets of the solar system
Loeb points out that the trajectory of the mysterious visitor is just five degrees from the Earth’s path around the Sun, that is, of the ecliptic plane. It argues that there is only one 0.2% probability of this happening.
- Visited several planets
In addition to its almost perfect alignment with the ecliptic plane, the moment of arrival of 3I/ATLAS places it on a trajectory that passes right next to Mars and Jupiter, worlds that intrigue our own scientists in the search for life beyond Earth — in what Loeb calls a “remarkable adjustment of the object’s trajectory.”
Earlier this month, the object passed close enough to Mars for two of the European Space Agency’s space probes orbiting the Red Planet to photograph it.
It is expected to reach just 53.5 million kilometers from Jupiterin March 2026, which could allow NASA’s Juno probe to also intercept its trajectory, argues Loeb.
- Developed a second tail
Astronomers also observed 3I/ATLAS developing a second tail, opposite the usual comet tail, which appears to point toward the Sun. Many other comets have been observed developing one.opposite tail“, which is a optical illusion resulting from our relative position as it passes between the Earth and the Sun.
However, Loeb argues that the second tail of 3I/ATLAS is an atypical case. “This anomalous cauda oposta, which does not result from a geometric perspectivehas never been previously reported in solar system comets,” writes Loeb.
“The ice fragments evaporate over time, but due to increased mass loss on the Sun-facing side, larger fragments are able to reach a great distance,” Loeb told Futurism in an email earlier this month.
- It seems to be huge
According to Loeb’s calculations, the “diameter of its solid density core must be more than 5 kilometers“, a measurement he inferred from an estimated mass of more than “33 billion tons“.
This would make the object “three to five orders of magnitude” more massive than or , the only two other interstellar objects ever observed to traverse our solar system.
This raises a perplexing statistical question: because we didn’t observe much more smaller interstellar objects?
“Given the limited reservoir of heavy elements, we should have discovered about one hundred thousand interstellar objects at the 0.1 km scale of 1I/’Oumuamua before meeting 3I/ATLAS, but we only detected two objects interstellar previously,” he argued in a September post on his blog.
- Nickel to iron ratios are out of the ordinary
Scientists have found that 3I/ATLAS has an “extreme abundance of nickel and iron” in its gaseous plume, which makes it a very atypical when compared to 2I/Borisov and other better-known comets in the solar system.
“At the distances at which comets are observed, the temperature is too low to vaporize silicate, sulfide and metallic grains with nickel and iron atoms”, wrote a team of astronomers in a pre-published on arXiv.
“Therefore, the presence of nickel and iron atoms in the cometary coma is extremely intriguing“, say the authors of the study.
Avi Loeb argues that these discoveries could indicate the presence of “nickel alloys industrially produced“.
- Its plume is mostly carbon dioxide ice
By examining data from the SPHEREx observatory, scientists concluded that the mass of 3I/ATLAS surrounding its core appears to have only 4% waterpresenting a much higher proportion of carbon dioxide gas than other comets.
Although Loeb claims that this makes the object atypicalscientists argued the opposite. “The discovery by SPHEREx of very large amounts of vaporized carbon dioxide gas around 3I/ATLAS told us that it could be like a normal solar system comet“, said the astronomer last month Carey Lisseastronomer at Johns Hopkins University.
In another, pre-published on arXiv, a team of researchers suggested that the object could contain “ices exposed to higher levels of radiation than comets in the Solar System”, or it may have “formed near the CO₂ ice line in its original protoplanetary disk”.
- It is extremely negatively polarized
The mysterious object also showed a “extreme negative bias“, as detailed in a pre-published in September on arXiv, which makes 3I/ATLAS a very atypical case.
“The combination of a low flip angle and extreme negative polarization is unprecedented among comets and asteroids, making 3I/ATLAS the first known object with such polarimetric behavior and representing a population previously unobserved“, wrote Loeb in a post on his blog.
The findings suggest it has more in common with transneptunian objectsminor planets and other smaller objects that orbit the Sun beyond Neptune’s orbit, according to the paper’s authors.
- It could be behind the famous “WOW!”
Avi Loeb went so far as to suggest that the famous “Wow sign!“, a highly unusual narrowband radio signal that was picked up by Ohio State University’s Big Ear radio telescope in 1977, may have been issued by 3I/ATLAS.
The signal generated widespread excitement about the possibility that it had come from an extraterrestrial entity and remained a mystery for decades — which could have been.
Loeb emphasizes that “the 3I/ATLAS arrived from a coincident direction with the ‘Wow! Sign’ radio, within 9 degrees, with a probability of 0.6%”.
- It’s much bluer than the Sun
Loeb initially only listed eight reasons why he was suspicious of the true nature of 3I/ATLAS. But this week, as 3I/ATLAS approaches its closest point to the Sunor its perihelion, scientists observed a “rapid increase” in your brightnessappearing “distinctly bluer than the Sun,” Loeb wrote in a new blog post.
Indeed, in a pre-published article on arXiv, researchers confirmed that, as the comet approached the Sun, its brightness increased at a much faster pace. This increase was more extreme than any other already observed on a comet, and left scientists surprised, says .
For the astronomer, It’s a very surprising discovery. “Dust is expected to redden scattered sunlight, and the surface of the object is expected to be an order of magnitude cooler than the 5,800 degrees Kelvin of the Sun’s photosphere, resulting in a redder color than the Sun,” says Loeb.
“We must therefore add the blue color at perihelion as a ninth anomaly to the list of unexpected properties… of this strange interstellar object,” he wrote. “Does it use an energy source hotter than the Sun?”
If it looks like a comet…
Whether these nine “anomalies” enumerated by Loeb are convincing enough to argue that 3I/ATLAS is “technological” in nature remains debatable.
Tom StatlerNASA’s lead scientist for small bodies in the solar system, told last month that there is a lot of evidence that we are simply faced with a rare visitor in the form of a natural comet from another star system.
“It looks like a comet. Does comet things. It very, very strongly resembles, in practically every way, the comets we know. It’s a comet“, Statler concluded at the time. As the Spanish say, ‘you can say you’re not a duck, but if you have a beak, if you swim, if you have feathers and do what you do… you are a duck‘.
Meanwhile, Loeb argues on his blog that “we need to collect as much data as possible to understand the nature of this anomalous object.” “The implication of alien technology would be huge and, therefore, we have to take this possibility seriously”.
“Our biggest rocket, SpaceX’s Starship is a hundred times smaller than 3I/ATLAS, therefore, if 3I/ATLAS was technological — its senders would have mastered capabilities that go far beyond our technologies.”
After ‘Oumuamua, now 3I/ATLAS. We really want to have one…
