He did before with Oumuamua.
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?