Posted on 08/12/2025 3:12:31 PM PDT by fruser1
Scientists are urging NASA to send a message to a mysterious interstellar object before it is too late.
The object, known as 3I/ATLAS, is traveling on a rare retrograde path and will reach its closest point to the sun on October 29, 2025, which Harvard physicist Avi Loeb suggested could be an ideal window for a covert approach on Earth.
While Loeb is not 100 percent sure 3I/ATLAS is of alien origin, he proposed communicating with it as a precaution and crafted a six-word message for the occasion.
The physicist told the Daily Mail that he wants to beam, 'Hello, welcome to our neighborhood. Peace!'
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Maye we cab get Neil deGrasse Tyson to reclassify it as ‘space junk’ or ‘just a rock’. Then we cam =n more on to more urgent things. Like Martians .
Let’s say it’s a rock. Nothing to do, no panic needed.
Let’s say it’s a very advanced civilization that can cross the expanse of space:
If they are peaceful, no panic needed.
If they have come to get rid of us, we can’t stop them anyway.
Looks like all the attention is unfounded.
On Avi’s Alien scale:
1 = Just a Rock
10 = Alien
3I = 4
Due to all the oddities associated with it.
Whether its a rock or something else is debatable, until it gets closer and Hubble and other instruments can get more information.
But then I am not interested in alerting any space travelers to our presence for a bit.
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Already done with the Voyager 1 probe, now in interstellar space.
Cool, I kind of like covert approaches
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It turns out the the object, at its core, is made of a material that is super dense, so dense that when it hits the Earth at 60 mps, it passes completely through the planet, shattering it into bits of rock & forming a new asteroid belt. This is called an “indirect attack” in the Dark Forest theory because its impossible to know who launched it or even when or where from it was launched.
I forgot once again the 1950s SF film
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War of the Worlds.
Look how quickly you switched to no longer using radio but going to streaming and cable.
Maybe it’s one of those generational interstellar starships ... Or maybe it’s just a big rock..
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Or maybe its an indirect attack by an alien species in hiding - cf the Dark Forest theory
“The castaways got off Gilligan’s Island.”
Let’s assume this rock does have some intelligent alien creatures in it. Today’s scientists have no idea how to communicate with them.
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We could also assume that the core of the object is made of super dense material, launched by some hidden alien race that detected our existence and is bent on the eliminated of the competition for resources, and that when the object swings around the Sun, it will pick up speed and slam into the Earth shattering it into a new asteroid belt.
Re: The 1950-60s Version of War of the Worlds. I remember the religious guy who reached out to the aliens in friendship. It didn’t end well :-(
They want to talk to a rock? Will they be disappointed when it doesn’t respond?
These things have been happening for eons. We just haven’t had the tools to see them.
That’s funny!
“Ain’t nobody here but us chickens.”
That’s six.
“you’ll get a boot in your ass, that’s the American Way.”
to quote toby keith...
but it is more than the allotted wordage.
No the estimate comes from the theory that most sun-like stars have their own kiuper belts, each with trillions of objects, and gravitational interactions will have millions of the lighter objects ejected every year. (I believe I read this in Sky & Telescope recently.) Our solar system also sheds millions of smaller kiuper belt objects every year. The objects ejected from a solar system remain in orbit around the galaxy center. They are sort of like large scale dust. Most comets come from the kiuper belt. Every time they come near the sun, they get risk getting a gravitational boost from Jupiter, the way Voyager did, and get ejected from the solar system. Earth has sent two space craft (three counting New Horizons) out of the solar system since 1979. In that time kiuper belt has shed millions of larger objects. The relative velocity of the solar system with respect to other nearby stars is several kilometers per second, with respect to the center of the galaxy about 200 km per second. Add that to any gravitational acceleration from the sun, and you get an object like Atlas.
No the estimate comes from the theory
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Proves my point - its a theory and a statistical conclusion. No facts need apply.
I’m glad that you are smarter then all the dozens or hundreds of professional astronomers in the world who have observed the object with wonder and open minds - unlike you - and not dismissed it out of hand.
What would science do if every one approached things with a closed mind and dismissed everything as something ordinary? Would they ever learn anything? Likely not. And they would would they go on social media and places like FR and demonstrate to all just how truly close minded they are?
Maxwell's equations, and General Relativity are theories, supported by statistical inference from countless experiments and experience. The inferences about the number of interstellar objects is much weaker, but not ridiculous. Until we have more evidence, and with the more sensitive sensors that should be available in the near future we will. In the meantime, we should to keep an open mind, agreed.
Heliocentricism, too, is "just" a theory.
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