Posted on 08/11/2025 2:42:20 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
Astronomers recently discovered a rare interstellar object passing through our solar system, and a Harvard physicist is sounding the alarm that its strange characteristics might indicate it’s more than just a typical comet.
"Maybe the trajectory was designed," Dr. Avi Loeb, science professor at Harvard University, told Fox News Digital. "If it had an objective to sort of to be on a reconnaissance mission, to either send mini probes to those planets or monitor them… It seems quite anomalous."
The object — dubbed 3I/ATLAS — was first detected in early July by an Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS, telescope located in Chile. The discovery marked only the third time an interstellar object has been observed entering our solar system, according to NASA.
Although NASA has classified the object as a comet, Loeb noted that an image of the cosmic visitor indicated an unexpected glow appearing in front of the object, rather than trailing behind it — something he described as "quite surprising."
"Usually with comets you have a tail, a cometary tail, where dust and gas are shining, reflecting sunlight, and that's the signature of a comet," Loeb told Fox News Digital. "Here, you see a glow in front of it, not behind it."
Measuring about 20 kilometers across, making it larger than Manhattan, 3I/ATLAS is also unusually bright for its distance. However, according to Loeb, its most unusual characteristic is its trajectory.
"If you imagine objects entering the solar system from random directions, just one in 500 of them would be aligned so well with the orbits of the planets," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Absolutely.
Back on this object - yeah, it’s not *likely* to be a starship, but it’s checked off several boxes from the “possible incoming starship” profile and caution says that we should probably keep a close eye on it.
If the thing turns and goes constant bearing, decreasing range, then we should really worry.
It’s looking for whales
Rain forecast San Francisco
Heavy storms
I love Italian!
And so do you
I guess it it starts slowing down we can get excited.
A common speculation in SF is that a true interstellar drive would not work deep in a solar system due to the gravity well or perhaps the solar wind - you might have to jump into or drop out of warp/supralight well away from the system core, perhaps out past the heliopause, then proceed in on sublight drives. There is some hard science evidence that reality may mirror fiction in this regard, so this could be the case here.
If you say he is good then he is alright with me.
Where has this story been posted before? I must have missed it.
Let’s say it is a starship/probe. I doubt there is anything we could do about it. Launch a nuke? Potential suicide. And if it is a Von Neumann type probe, it’s probably not the first by a long shot and may decide not to mess with the aliens that already arrived here hundreds, thousands, or millions of years ago. Just accelerate on to its next target star system.
Even those who strongly disagree with his hypotheses often note that he comes across as friendly, likable, and open in conversation, which has helped him attract media attention and a broad audience outside the astrophysics community.
In general, I would say he has cultivated a reputation as a solid science communicator who’s willing to discuss bold, unconventional ideas (like the “alien probe” possibility for Oumuamua and the comet in this article) without being combative toward critics.
“Harvard”, “professor”......nough said.
Avi Loeb isn’t part of the Woke crowd at Harvard. He’s just a popular astronomer.
BTW, Avi Loeb has criticized Harvard for drifting toward “the extreme left” and encouraged the university to heal societal polarization, uphold academic freedom, and represent a broader array of views.
This looks like another case of Avi advertising astronomy rather than solid speculation.
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Avi does not do “solid speculation”, he does science. We do the speculation, solid or otherwise.
The facts are what they are, regardless of any speculations. Oumuamua is still not explained.
Fact: Astronomical entities like NASA are desperately trying to avoid releasing any info that could be used by the Alien Theory camp. To the point that at least 2 technical papers have been released claiming that water is found in the objects emissions, however, their own data says the opposite - there is no water.
The papers authors know that 99.9% of the general public will never read their papers, just the titles, and of those that do, most will not understand what they are reading, and the very few that do, can be dismissed as cranks, conspiracy theorists, etc. This allows astronomical entities to point those papers and say the object is just an ordinary comet. All of the oddities are thereby eliminated and never studied.
Fact: the object is in the same plan as the planets - extraordinarily rare;
Fact: the object is projecting its ‘tail’ sun-ward - never before seen.
This could be explained by large particles being blown off the surface by the heat of the Sun [ even though this was first observed while the object was beyond the orbit of Jupiter ], but that also means small particles would also be blow off and forced away from the sun forming a tail - no such tail has been observed. there is no current explanation for his phenomenon.
The object is currently entering the Asteroid Belt and the size of glow seems to be increasing. Speculation: Could this be some sort of mechanism to illuminate and possibly deflect rocks in its path?;
Fact: No one can determine the actual size of the object itself, not even Hubble.
Originally, the object was believed to be 20km in diameter, but now it is thought to be 10.5km by some and 320 meters by others [ this lower size would put it in the same size class and 2I/Borisov and Oumuamua ].
Fact: Speed.
The object is traveling at a relative 60 miles per second. At that speed and at the original diameter of 20 km, if it hit a rock 20meters in diameter, the result would at least heavily damage I3 or shatter it, releasing the equivalent of a 20 megaton explosion. Speculation: How can object that of any size, traveling at that speed, travel for millions or billions of years through interstellar space and not hit anything? What are the odds?
Avi Object Scale 1-10:
1 is definitely a rock. 10 is definitely alien object of some sort.
2I/Borisov is a 1. Oumuamua is a 3. I3 Atlas is a 4.
Possible solution:
The Juno Probe. Slated as End of Mission it is scheduled to be destroyed in the near future. “Recent proposals suggest using Juno’s remaining propellant to alter its trajectory in September 2025, potentially enabling a close flyby of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS in March 2026, extending its scientific lifespan beyond its original Jupiter mission.” - AI answer.
Speculation: Will NASA do it? Publicly? Or will it just continue the Jupiter mission for 25 more orbits before the probe is de-orbited? Or will NASA do it secretly and never release the findings as so many other NASA findings before?
I doubt there is anything we could do about it. Launch a nuke?
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No tto worry nothing we could launch would be able to catch up with it.
or it’s a big rock
I agree the data is intriguing and unexplained in this situation, but the idea of alien reconnaissance is still speculation — it’s an interpretation built on two anomalies: the sunward “tail” and the orbital plane. Those anomalies are real, but jumping from them to a deliberate alien mission is a hypothesis, not a proven conclusion. That doesn’t make it worthless — just important to keep the line between observation and speculation clear.
.....or a rock....or Rosie ODonnel returning to America.
WAG science is fun.
Did or did not Avi speculate that this object could be an alien probe on a reconnaissance mission?
If I did the math right, at that speed it would take 44,800 years to travel 1 light year.
How can you be so sure?
Been to Harvard, have you?
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