3I/ATLAS Is Extremely Weird. But Not In The Ways You Think [23:39]

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· What is 3I/ATLAS
0:00 · If you're watching this video, you are
0:01 · probably very familiar with comet 3y eye
0:04 · atlas. It's hard to escape all of the
0:06 · information that is out there, a lot of
0:08 · claims, but there's a lot of science and
0:10 · it is a very weird object. It is unlike
0:12 · anything we have ever seen here in the
0:14 · solar system. Something that has spent
0:16 · millions, maybe even billions of years
0:18 · floating through the cosmos and it
0:20 · arrived here in our solar system. It's
0:23 · giving us a unique chance to understand
0:26 · the composition, the formation of
0:29 · objects that come from entirely
0:32 · different star systems. It saves us all
0:34 · the trouble of having to build a
0:35 · spaceship to go to another star system.
0:38 · The universe is sending this stuff to
0:40 · us. At Universe Today, we've been doing
0:42 · a ton of reporting on comet 3 I atlas.
0:45 · We have dozens of stories on the website
0:47 · about this incredible object. And so in
0:50 · this video, I'm going to tell you
0:51 · everything we know about this comet so
0:52 · far, what happens next, and how we could
0:56 · take advantage of other interstellar
0:58 · objects in the future to learn about
1:01 · other star systems. I'm going to
1:03 · reference the actual astronomers who
1:05 · have been making the observations, the
1:06 · telescopes that they use, the methods
1:09 · that they gathered their information,
1:10 · and we're going to put links to every
1:12 · single one of the papers in the show
1:14 · notes down below so that you can follow
1:16 · and do your own research to learn more.
1:18 · And of course, we're going to address
1:19 · the elephant in the room, the paper by
1:21 · Abby Loe, the controversy on here on
1:24 · YouTube that people are making claims
1:26 · that it's an alien spacecraft. You know,
1:27 · it's something that I can't ignore. If
1:29 · you just want to hear about that, you
1:31 · can just go to that chapter in this
1:32 · video and watch that now. Otherwise,
1:34 · stick around for the science and all of
1:36 · the papers that have come out. So, comet
· Discovery of the comet
1:38 · 3i Atlas was first discovered on July
1:42 · 1st, 2025. It was announced by Daryl
1:45 · Siligman and his team. This is the third
1:48 · interstellar object. Atlas is the name
1:51 · of the telescope that discovered it.
1:53 · It's the asteroid terrestrial impact
1:55 · last alert system. This is a telescope
1:58 · that is scanning the sky every night
2:00 · looking for objects that are moving. And
2:02 · so it finds a lot of comets and
2:04 · asteroids and has many of them named
2:06 · after it. Seligman and his team
2:08 · identified this object moving through
2:10 · the Atlas images and realized that it
2:13 · had a very high velocity and suspected
2:16 · that it was an interstellar object. And
2:18 · so they did follow on observations with
2:21 · the Canada France Hawaii telescope and
2:23 · the very large telescope. And from there
2:25 · they confirmed that yes indeed this is
2:27 · an object that came from outside of the
2:30 · solar system. And this was blindingly
2:33 · obvious mostly because of its speed. It
2:36 · has a hyperbolic velocity of 58
2:39 · kilometers per second. This is the
2:41 · fastest ever seen and well beyond the
2:43 · escape velocity of the sun. In other
2:46 · words, this object is going to blast
2:48 · through the solar system and then
2:50 · continue on out into the Milky Way. It
2:52 · has an inclination of 175° compared to
2:56 · the ecliptic. And that's about 5° off of
2:59 · the Earth's orbit from the sun. So, it's
3:02 · very similar to the orbit of the rest of
3:04 · the planets in the solar system. And
3:06 · that is surprising of all of the angles
3:08 · that it could have come in on that it
3:10 · chose this one. And just for comparison,
3:13 · Omoa, which was the first interstellar
3:15 · object ever seen, was about 400 m across
3:18 · and very cylindrical, very long compared
3:21 · to its width. The second object,
3:22 · Borosov, was about 975 m across, while
3:27 · this one is much bigger. Estimates put
3:30 · it between 5 1/2 and 10 km across. Speed
3:34 · Omu was the slowest going through the
3:36 · solar system at 26 km/s. Borosov was
3:41 · moving at 32 km/s
3:44 · and 3i Atlas is going at 58 km/s.
3:49 · More than twice as quick. And while the
3:51 · previous interstellar object OMO MUA had
3:53 · very significant changes in its
3:55 · brightness, ThreeI Atlas didn't change
3:58 · very much, which means that it was
3:59 · probably more spherical in nature. So
4:02 · then we had a series of telescopes from
4:05 · around the world and in space turning to
4:07 · gaze at this new interstellar object.
4:10 · For example, the 10.4 me telescope on
4:12 · the Canary Islands. In a paper published
4:15 · by Arduente Marcos and others, they
4:17 · found that it is much redder than other
4:20 · interstellar objects is much more
4:23 · similar to a Dtype asteroid than a Kyper
4:26 · belt object. And they were able to
4:27 · calculate its rotation period at 16.79
4:32 · hours. And they concluded that it had
4:34 · similar chemical composition to objects
4:36 · that come from beyond the asteroid belt,
4:39 · but not all the way out into the Kyper
4:40 · belt, which we'll get into in a bit. But
· Pre-discovery by other telescopes
4:42 · it turns out with that initial
4:44 · discovery, astronomers looked through
4:47 · archival data and realized that they had
4:50 · already seen it. And the best example of
4:52 · this is the Ver Rubin Observatory, which
4:55 · was in the process of its provisioning
4:57 · phase or they're testing out the optics.
5:00 · It happened to be looking at exactly the
5:02 · spot in the sky where three Atlas was
5:06 · moving. In a paper from Colin Orion
5:08 · Chandler and others, they looked through
5:11 · archival data from the Ver Rubin
5:13 · Observatory and realized that they had
5:16 · 37 separate images of the comet moving
5:20 · through their field of view. And then
5:21 · astronomers working with the transiting
5:23 · exoplanet survey satellite or CASS
5:25 · realized that the comet had been moving
5:28 · through their field of view in the
5:30 · region that the mission was looking for
5:32 · exoplanets and that they had been seeing
5:34 · it continuously from May 7th to June
5:38 · 2nd. And from tests they were able to
5:40 · make estimates of its size bringing it
5:43 · down to about 5.4 kilometers across. But
5:47 · even as early as May, several months
5:50 · before its discovery by Atlas, it was
5:52 · already starting to exhibit cometlike
5:55 · behavior at a distance of about six
5:57 · astronomical units. So that was the
· More observations
5:59 · discovery in the pre-discovery and then
6:01 · both the ground and space-based
6:04 · telescopes all turned to focus on this
6:06 · comet and try to figure out more about
6:09 · it. There were observations from the
6:11 · Canada France Hawaii telescope, the very
6:13 · large telescope, the Kotamia
6:14 · Astronomical Observatory, the Palomar
6:16 · 200inch telescope, the Apache Point
6:18 · Astrophysical Research Consortium, the
6:20 · Grand Telescope on the Canary Islands,
6:22 · NASA's infrared telescope facility, the
6:24 · Gemini South telescope, the 3.8 m same
6:27 · telescope. But there were some very
6:28 · interesting observations made with some
6:31 · of the biggest telescopes. In a paper
6:33 · from Bin Young and others using the
6:35 · Gemini South telescope, they gathered
6:37 · data between July 5th and July 14th,
6:41 · which was very early on after that
6:43 · initial discovery. And they saw that it
6:45 · had the color of a DT type asteroid. So
6:49 · think of like Phobos with a more reddish
6:52 · color and a very low albido. And we
6:55 · actually have a meteorite here on Earth
6:57 · that had a very similar composition to
6:59 · what they were seeing, the Tagish Lake
7:01 · meteorite which fell near the turn of
7:03 · the century in Canada. And then on
7:05 · August 4th, the Hubble Space Telescope
7:07 · was turned to look at three Atlas. In a
7:09 · paper from David Jwitt and others, they
7:12 · were looking at the comet when it was at
7:14 · 3.8 astronomical units away from its
7:17 · perihelion or its closest point to the
7:19 · sun. And they were able to observe the
7:21 · coma around the nucleus of the comet and
7:24 · calculate that it was losing between 12
7:28 · and 120 kg per second of material
7:32 · sublimating off of its surface. But one
7:34 · of the strangest observations was that
7:36 · it had an anti-tail, a tail of material
7:40 · that was pointing towards the sun. And
7:42 · this is a bit of a mystery, but there
7:44 · are some explanations for what this
7:46 · could be. When the comet is that far
7:47 · from the sun, it's starting to get
7:49 · heated up by the sun's radiation, but
7:53 · it's too far away for the solar wind to
7:56 · really impact it. And so the side that's
7:58 · facing the sun starts to sublimate.
8:00 · Material comes off of the comet and
8:02 · starts to drift towards the sun. And
8:05 · they also confirmed the nucleus to be
8:08 · around 5 1/2 km across. But it really
8:11 · depends on what is the molecule that is
8:14 · contributing to this coma. could change
8:16 · the size of the comet. And then of
8:17 · course the James Web Space Telescope was
8:19 · called on to take images of comet 3i
8:22 · Atlas. On August 25th, Martin Cordinier
8:25 · and others gave their findings with web
8:27 · and it revealed a carbon dioxide
8:31 · dominated coma with a ratio of carbon
8:34 · dioxide to water of 7.6:1. This is the
8:38 · highest ratio of carbon dioxide to water
8:40 · that has ever been seen in a comet and
8:43 · is one of the strongest clues about the
8:45 · formation and origin of comet 3i atlas.
8:49 · It likely has a carbon dioxide rich
8:52 · nucleus which is not something that we
8:54 · see comets here in the solar system. Now
8:57 · why is it giving off this much carbon
8:59 · dioxide? One possibility is that it's
9:01 · experiencing unusual amounts of
9:03 · radiation that far out in the solar
9:05 · system or received a bunch while it was
9:08 · in interstellar space. And the other
9:09 · possibility, and this is the really
9:11 · intriguing one, is that it formed in its
9:14 · own star system at around the carbon
9:17 · dioxide frost line. We have a water
9:19 · frost line here in the solar system,
9:21 · which is sort of in the middle of the
9:22 · asteroid belt, and then a carbon dioxide
9:24 · frost line, which is much farther out in
9:27 · the solar system. And so maybe this
9:29 · object formed at that place where even
9:31 · the carbon dioxide doesn't sublimate
9:33 · from radiation from its star. But this
9:35 · is not a thing that we see in the solar
9:37 · system. And they also confirmed this
9:39 · plume of dust going in the sunward
9:41 · direction. And then on August 25th,
9:42 · Rohan Gankar and others used the very
9:45 · large telescope to analyze his coma and
9:48 · its glowing tail. And this is one of the
9:50 · other really bizarre discoveries that
9:52 · was made which is that they discovered
9:53 · the presence of nickel in the coma
9:57 · around the comet but not the presence of
9:59 · iron. They also detected the presence of
10:01 · cyanide. Now cyanide is common. Uh there
10:04 · was a great scare back in 1910 when
10:06 · Haley's comet was passing through the
10:08 · solar system and astronomers had just
10:10 · developed the technique of photometry.
10:12 · They were able to measure the chemical
10:14 · fingerprint of comet Halley and they
10:16 · detected the presence of cyanide. So
10:18 · people were worried that cyanide gas was
10:21 · going to poison them on Earth, which of
10:22 · course it didn't. But this was the kind
10:26 · of conspiracy theories that were forming
10:28 · about comets more than 100 years ago. So
10:30 · how are you getting nickel in the coma
10:32 · of the comet? Now you're not getting it
10:34 · directly sublimating off of the surface
10:36 · of the comet. It's not hot enough, not
10:39 · deep enough into the solar system for
10:40 · that to start happening. Instead, it's
10:42 · likely that there's nickel mixed in with
10:45 · other organic compounds on the surface
10:47 · of the comet. Those compounds are
10:50 · sublimating off the surface of the
10:51 · comet, and then these organic molecules
10:53 · are breaking up, and you're getting this
10:55 · nickel mixed in with the coma material.
10:57 · But where was its tail? Although we had
11:00 · seen activity of the comet for several
11:02 · months, we still hadn't seen its tail.
11:04 · But then on September 4th, we got new
11:07 · images from the Gemini South
11:08 · Observatory, and there's the tail. At
11:11 · this point, it's only
11:13 · 120th of a degree in the sky. Really
11:16 · only visible in the largest telescopes.
· Strange things happening
11:19 · There was some interesting things that
11:20 · happened to it. It was potentially hit
11:22 · by a coronal mass ejection. Not that
11:24 · that seemed to have done anything to the
11:26 · comet. And from the orbit of the comet,
11:28 · astronomers were able to make some
11:30 · really interesting calculations about
11:32 · where it might have come from. So the
11:34 · first paper on this came out almost
11:36 · immediately from Matthew Hopkins and
11:38 · others and they calculated the
11:41 · trajectory of the comet and estimated
11:44 · that it came from the thick disc of the
11:46 · Milky Way a region that is metal pore
11:49 · and they predict that it's probably
11:51 · around 7.6 billion years old which would
11:55 · make it the oldest object that has ever
11:57 · been found in the solar system.
11:59 · Everything inside the solar system
12:01 · formed with the sun four and a half
12:03 · billion years ago. And so here's
12:05 · something that is billions of years
12:06 · older than anything we have in the solar
12:08 · system. And then on September 9th, Expz
12:11 · Cuto and others calculated the
12:13 · historical journey of comet 3i Atlas.
12:15 · Did it really come from the region that
12:18 · had been estimated? They wanted to know
12:20 · if various stellar flybys throughout its
12:22 · history could have changed its
12:24 · trajectory very much. And they were able
12:25 · to find 93 encounters with stars
12:30 · throughout 10 million years of its
12:32 · history. But when they added up all of
12:34 · those encounters, they found they were
12:36 · minimal. The closest encounter was
12:38 · about.3 lighty years away from another
12:41 · star and only ended up changing its
12:43 · velocity by half a meter per second,
12:47 · which is insignificant. And they
12:49 · estimated that the age of the comet is
12:52 · somewhere between 3 and 11 billion years
12:55 · old and again came from a system which
12:59 · has a low metallicity which matches this
13:02 · observation that it has a high amount of
13:04 · carbon dioxide relative to water in it.
· Important milestones
13:06 · During its flight through the solar
13:07 · system, comet 3is was expected to make a
13:10 · few close flybys. The first close flyby
13:13 · on October 3rd. It came within.19
13:16 · astronomical units of Mars. On October
13:19 · 29th, it comes within 1.36 astronomical
13:21 · units of the sun. On November 3rd, it
13:24 · comes within 65 astronomical units of
13:27 · Venus. On December 19th, 1.8
13:31 · astronomical units of the Earth. And on
13:33 · March 16th, 2026, it comes within.36
13:37 · astronomical units of Jupiter. And so
13:39 · for this Mars flyby, we have a fleet of
13:43 · spacecraft at Mars ready to see as it
13:45 · comes by. We have rovers on the ground,
13:48 · spacecraft in orbit around Mars. But
13:50 · there's a problem, and that is the US
13:52 · government shutdown means that none of
13:55 · the teams are working with the
13:57 · spacecraft. And so we were lucky to get
13:59 · some images from Perseverance, but we
14:01 · don't know when we're going to be able
14:02 · to get the images from the Mars
14:04 · Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has the
14:05 · best telescope in the system. But we did
14:07 · get images from ISA's Exom Mars mission
14:10 · and they're trying with the Mars Express
14:13 · spacecraft. So on October 3rd, NASA's
· Images from Mars
14:17 · Perseverance rover looked up into the
14:18 · sky and looked at the region where three
14:22 · Atlas was moving through the sky. It
14:24 · took 20 30 secondond exposures and then
14:26 · Simeon Schmouse painstakingly went
14:29 · through the raw images and stacked them
14:32 · up to give us this image of comet 3i
14:35 · Atlas moving through the sky on Mars.
14:38 · ExoMars mission started making its
14:40 · observations on October 1st wrapping up
14:43 · on October 7th. At the closest point, it
14:46 · was about 30 million kilometers away
14:48 · from the comet. XMRs was able to make a
14:50 · series of half second exposures of the
14:54 · comet and then the European Space Agency
14:56 · was able to stack those images and
14:58 · produce this image of the comet moving
15:00 · through the field of view. Now, it
15:02 · wasn't sensitive enough to distinguish
15:04 · the nucleus from the coma, but still you
15:07 · can see the tail and you can see it
15:09 · moving. And Exomar was never designed to
15:11 · do this kind of thing. It's used to
15:12 · looking at objects that are 10,000 to
15:15 · 100,000 times brighter than comet 3i
15:18 · Atlas. And we know that is Mars Express
15:21 · spacecraft was also trying to make
15:23 · observations. Normally, it's looking
15:25 · down at the surface of Mars, taking
15:27 · pictures of bright terrain on the
15:29 · surface, but it is able to look at
15:30 · objects in space. It's taking pictures
15:32 · of Phobos and Damos, but it can only do
15:34 · half second exposures. It can't do the
15:36 · 5-second exposures that the ExoMars
15:38 · mission can do. And so so far the
15:40 · European Space Agency says they just
15:42 · haven't been able to resolve the comet
15:45 · in their images. So we're going to have
15:46 · to wait until after the government
15:48 · shutdown in the US to see the images
15:50 · taken by the Mars Reconnaissance
15:52 · Orbiter. It has a halfmeter telescope.
15:54 · It can take these kinds of images. At
· What's next?
15:56 · the time that I'm recording this video,
15:58 · the time you're probably watching this
15:59 · video, comet 3is has now gone behind the
16:02 · sun and we're going to wait for it to
16:04 · reappear on the other side so that we
16:07 · can continue to take images of it. Some
16:09 · of the most interesting things that it's
16:11 · going to do are only going to be seen by
16:14 · spacecraft that are on the other side of
16:16 · the sun from us. For example, the
16:18 · European Space Ay's Juice mission is
16:20 · going to be able to see it in early
16:21 · November before we'll be able to see it
16:24 · from the Earth. Although it's pretty far
16:26 · away, it will be seeing it at this rate
16:29 · of highest activity and maybe see the
16:31 · longest version of the tail. And
16:33 · according to a paper from Marshall
16:34 · Eubanks and others, the Juice Mission
16:36 · will actually fly through the tail of
16:38 · ThreeI Atlas. I'm not sure it'll be able
16:40 · to detect anything in the tail, but
· Potential future flybys
16:42 · they'll try. An interstellar object
16:44 · passing through the solar system is an
16:45 · incredible opportunity for us to examine
16:48 · an object that was formed in another
16:50 · star system, but their paths through the
16:53 · solar system come randomly. You never
16:55 · know where they're going to be. But what
16:56 · if we could do a flyby of one of these
16:59 · objects? The European Space Agency is
17:01 · planning a mission in 2029 called the
17:04 · Comet Interceptor mission. It's going to
17:06 · launch in 2029, fly out to a parking
17:08 · orbit, and then wait for a target. Now,
17:11 · that could be a long period comet coming
17:12 · from the or cloud, or that could be an
17:15 · interstellar object. Then, it'll fire
17:17 · its thrusters and put itself on an
17:19 · intercept course with that object and do
17:21 · a very close flyby. And that'll give us
17:24 · a better view than any of these
17:26 · telescopes, any of these spacecraft that
17:27 · we've had so far. And scientists at the
17:29 · Southwest Research Institute are
17:31 · developing a concept for an interstellar
17:34 · object analysis mission that could fly
17:36 · past a future interstellar object as
17:38 · well. If this mission was in space right
17:40 · now, it could have done a flyby of 3i
17:43 · Atlas. It's led by Alan Stern, who's the
17:45 · principal investigator of the New
17:47 · Horizon's mission. We'll get one last
17:49 · chance to observe it as it goes past
17:51 · Jupiter with the Juno mission, but it
17:53 · won't be very close, and most of its
17:55 · activity will have died down at that
17:56 · point. All right, let's address the
· Is it an alien spacecraft?
17:58 · elephant in the room. Is it an alien
18:00 · spacecraft? Well, there's no evidence to
18:03 · believe that it is. Now, you can never
18:06 · rule it out. It could always be an alien
18:08 · spacecraft, but if you're going to make
18:10 · the claim that it is an alien
18:12 · spacecraft, you've got to have some kind
18:14 · of evidence that says that it's that
18:16 · other than mere coincidence. I've
18:19 · covered more than a dozen science papers
18:21 · here in this video, but one science
18:23 · paper comes from Abby Lobe and he is
18:26 · proposing that this is in fact an alien
18:28 · spacecraft. He's also been writing on
18:30 · his blog all of the interesting,
18:32 · unusual, anomalous behavior that this
18:36 · comet is experiencing and recently gave
18:38 · it a 30 to 40% chance of being an alien
18:41 · spacecraft. He identifies nine anomalies
18:44 · that indicate that it's an alien
18:46 · spacecraft. For example, how large it
18:48 · is, the chemical composition of its
18:51 · coma. Four of these criteria he assumes
18:55 · are going to be better understood with
18:58 · upcoming observations with telescopes,
19:00 · but five of them can't be explained. For
19:02 · example, the fact that it's coming in
19:04 · very close to the plane of the ecliptic,
19:06 · that it's going to make relatively close
19:09 · flybys of Mars and the sun and Jupiter.
19:12 · But these can also be explained by
19:14 · coincidences. None of these are things
19:16 · that a comet can't do. They're just a
19:18 · collection of interesting features of
19:20 · this object. And if you're going to make
19:21 · a claim that this is an alien
19:23 · spacecraft, you have to identify things
19:26 · that it's doing that comets and
19:28 · asteroids just can't do. So, there was a
19:31 · paper that came out from James Davenport
19:33 · and others, and they talk about four
19:36 · different criteria that you would expect
19:37 · to see if it's not just a comet,
19:40 · something more like an alien spacecraft.
19:42 · For example, you'd be looking at an
19:43 · anomalous trajectory. if it started to
19:45 · decelerate heavily in a way that a comet
19:48 · just wouldn't do it. Or if it had an
19:50 · anomalous spectra or colors, if it was
19:53 · purple, if it was made of chrome or
19:56 · carbon fiber or some other material that
19:58 · you wouldn't expect a comet to be made
20:00 · of, it could have an anomalous shape.
20:02 · Instead of being roughly a sphere or a
20:05 · rubble pile, it could be shaped like an
20:07 · arrow or shaped like a triangle or
20:09 · shaped like a board cube. or it could
20:10 · give off some kind of transmission like
20:13 · radio signals that you would not expect
20:15 · to see coming from a comet. Those are
20:17 · the kinds of lines of evidence that you
20:19 · would want to see to be able to support
20:21 · the claim that it's an alien technology.
20:25 · And this is just a fraction of the
20:27 · papers that have been coming out about
20:29 · three Atlas. These are the big ones.
20:31 · There have been a lot of others as well.
20:33 · Although the scientific community
20:35 · disagrees with Abby Loe and the claims
20:37 · that he's making about the nature of
20:39 · threei Atlas, there are a lot of people
20:43 · here on YouTube that are making
20:45 · completely baseless claims. They're just
20:47 · jumping on the bandwagon. They're taking
20:49 · part in this excitement over this object
20:51 · and they're making a lot of really
20:52 · baseless claims with no scientific
20:55 · underpinnings of what they're saying.
20:58 · And the problem is that it's really hard
20:59 · for people to know what is good
21:01 · information, what's bad information. So,
21:03 · my hope is that you can go and you can
21:05 · look at all of these different journal
21:06 · papers and you can follow these and
21:09 · understand the sources that I'm quoting
21:11 · for the things that I'm saying about
21:13 · this comet and I will continue to do
21:15 · that as we move into the future. All
· Final thoughts
21:17 · right, so we've reached the intermission
21:19 · of our observations of comet 3i Atlas.
21:21 · It's now gone past Mars. It is making
21:23 · its way behind the sun from our
21:25 · perspective. We're going to have to wait
21:27 · until early November when it finally
21:30 · appears from the other side of the sun
21:32 · and the observations will continue. We
21:34 · will learn as much as we can about this
21:36 · comet until it fades away off into the
21:39 · cosmos. Maybe to go visit another star
21:42 · system. I'm going to share some final
21:43 · thoughts, but first I'd like to thank
21:45 · our patrons. Thanks to Abe Kingston,
21:47 · Barely Griffing, Brian Bod, Carwin,
21:49 · Chuck Hawkins, Commander Block, S
21:50 · Nelson, David Verbuff, David Gilson, and
21:52 · David Mats, Evan Pro, Greg Phy, Hudson
21:53 · Ward, James Clark, Jeremy Madden, Jim
21:55 · Burke, Jordan Young, Josh Schultz,
21:56 · Brussels, Spitz, Michael Purcell, Modso,
21:58 · OnePAs.org, Paul Robbach, Rank Haidu,
22:00 · Richard Williams, Sean Sergeant, Steven
22:02 · Flem, Team 49, Telescopes Canada, Vlad
22:05 · Shiplin, and Wolf Gang Clots who support
22:06 · us at the master of the universe level,
22:08 · and all our patrons. All your support
22:10 · means the universe to us. I've been
22:12 · doing this job for a long time now, 26
22:14 · years. And during this time, we have
22:16 · learned about three of these
22:18 · interstellar objects. Each one is
22:20 · special and different and offers this
22:23 · incredible perspective on another star
22:26 · system. And thanks to the Ver Rubin
22:28 · Observatory, which is just in the
22:30 · process of coming online now, we're
22:32 · going to get many more observations.
22:34 · It's expected we're going to learn about
22:36 · more than a dozen of these objects every
22:39 · single year. We've got spacecraft in the
22:42 · works from the European Space Agency.
22:44 · other space agencies are planning them
22:46 · as well. We will eventually have
22:48 · close-up images of interstellar objects.
22:51 · Then comes landers. Then comes sample
22:54 · return missions. And so we've got this
22:56 · incredible opportunity. The universe is
22:58 · sending us material, sending us care
23:01 · packages of asteroids and comets that
23:04 · were formed in other star systems,
23:07 · allowing us to learn about their
23:09 · histories. Instead of us having to build
23:12 · an interstellar spacecraft to go to
23:14 · another star system, interstellar
23:16 · objects are coming to us. All we have to
23:19 · do is be ready to study them. It's going
23:23 · to be a fascinating time and the best is
23:26 · yet to come. All right, we'll see you
23:28 · next time.

It’s weird!

Extremely Weird. But Not In The Ways You Think. 😊

(time index)

00:00 What is 3I/ATLAS
01:37 Discovery of the comet
Darryl Seligman and others https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.02757
R. de la Fuente Marcos and others https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.12922
04:41 Pre-discovery by other telescopes
Colin Orion Chandler and others https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13409
Adina Feinstein and others https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21967
05:58 More observations
Bin Yang and others https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.14916v1
David Jewitt and others https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.02934
Martin Cordiner and others https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.18209
Rohan Rahatgaonkar and others https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.18382
11:19 Strange things happening
Matthew Hopkins et al https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.05318
X. Pérez-Couto and others https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.07678
13:06 Important milestones
14:14 Images from Mars
15:56 What’s next?
Marshall Eubanks and others: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.15768
16:42 Potential future flybys
17:58 Is it an alien spacecraft?
Avi Loeb https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.12213
James Davenport and others https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.16825
21:17 Final thoughts

It was weird in the ways that I thought, because I’m on it right now !!!!

I’m here because of the Angry Astronaut.

Extremely Weird. But Not In The Ways You Think. 😊

I think I could say that about life. ;D

😊 I grok that. Not the AI, actual grok. 🧠

It was a long time ago but I read that book too. :)

Clickbait:
https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryAstronaut/videos

Click bait.

The guy is Canadian, joined YouTube 25 September 2007, and runs a promoted website, also registered in Canada: #3400-333 Hunt Road, Courtenay, BC, V9N 3R6 Canada.

He's a -- Fraser Cain on Blue Sky and raises money on his Patreon through memberships. It's entertainment using Creative Commons materials, packaged alongside his "content creator" persona.

A look back to how some early work:
Blender as portal to another Universe "A frog sees a blender as a way to get to another universe" -- Apr 19, 2008
Could We Move The Sun? "Could We Move The Sun?" -- Aug 1, 2013

Clickbait:
—

No Jordan Wright is not clickbait - he’s the only one that can translate complex papers into understandable English. All the others do not explain the science at all or not very well. He asks questions about basic assumptions, while the others follow the orthodoxy.

--- "TheAngryAstronaut/videos"

As to the notion that the above channel is "click bait," and with another's comment it is not, here are some details about this CLICK BAIT.

The Angry Astronaut joined YouTube 5 May 2019, and has put out "1,821 videos" in that time. Some are "Exclusive content and online discussions for Patreon supporters!!"

AdSense estimate for Angry Astronaut "Stay angry about space"

He uses "donations" strategies quite successfully, as the following shows:

Get the Angry Astronaut to Australia and New Zealand! Jordan Wright -- Organizer -- Taylors, SC

A look back to this "angry" content creator:

The Angry Astronaut's first review Dec 1, 2019
The Angry Astronaut's Pack Destruction Challenge Dec 17, 2019
LEGO GIVEAWAY update and SpaceX coverage Jan 17, 2020 --- In this video he talks about promoting his channel and getting subscribers, as well as LEGOs.

And, from his Patreon page: "Recommended by Angry Astronaut" -- Jenined UFO Research - 1,808 members · UFO Research🔺Collector🔺Compilation Creator

Jenined🔺UFO Research

These are all entertainment and intended to earn some money via AdSense and donations and "memberships." And it's all about MONEY.

Yes, he is clickbait, and he doesn’t translate anything, he just builds up to detonation throughout his presentations to keep that money rollin’ in.

This character uses papers out of order - cites a September paper, followed by an August paper.

The papers themselves amount to contortions to keep the object firmly within the orthodoxy, despite citing reasons to the contrary immediately afterward. In sum, they cite currently known facts, followed by explanations that are gobbledygook.

The repeated use of the word ‘comet’ by the guy predisposes the listener to walk away with the impression there is really nothing to see or learn from the object, even though it presents un-comet-like anomalous behavior. Mass loss: despite losing between 600,000 to 6,000,000 tons of material out-gassed since first observed in May, there has been not the slightest deviation from its course and speed, as would be expected as observed in all comets.

One thing, among many, that stood out is when the scientists’ papers tried to calculate the object’s path and speed. The paper cited says the object had 61 significant encounters with stars, yet had no change in speed or course. [ How do they know that? They are scientists, so do not ask. ] They go on to say there were no significant encounters in the last 10 million years based on their model, Gaia DR3 [ not explained ], that can account for 3I’s present trajectory or origin. But despite the disclaimer, the object is consistent with the “thin disk population,” [ of which we have only observed 3 possible examples ], and cannot account for its “large peculiar velocity”.

Later, the same paper cites Oumuamua’s anomalous course and sped change after rounding the Sun, putting it down to gaseous emissions, even though no such emission was observed and the tumbling rate remained unchanged.

Avi Loeb’s paper states that the paper is largely a pedagogical exercise, testing a hypothetical model, makes no claim that it is an alien spacecraft, and to which the authors do not necessarily ascribe. Despite the disclaimer by Loeb, the guy takes the paper as fact, rather than the fun hypothesis Avi states it is.

The guy then goes on to attempts to discredit Loeb by using another paper that speculates on how a real alien craft would present itself [ as if an alien would be more like us technologically { and not actually all that alien }. But the thing about aliens is they are alien. So how would the scientists really know? ]

In closing, the guy states that Loeb’s speculative paper is a ‘claim’ [ which it is not ]. See how that works? Pay no attention, do not even try to learn anything, the scientific community has all the answers you need to know, go back to sleep, ignore it, everything is just a coincidence, and therefore, easily explainable.

540 days under observation
24 hours 12,960hr
60 min hr 776,000 min
60 sec min 46,656,000 sec

Mass loss:
12 kg/s x 46,656,000[time/s] = 559,987,200 kg total lost over 540 days/observed = 617,250 tons
120 kg/s x 46,656,000[time/s] = 5,599,872,000 kg total lost over 540 days/observed= 6,172,500 tons

Drink the Koolaid.

Well then, you expect Jordan to go to space-related events and conferences all over the world on his dime? And then out of the goodness of his heart make ad-less, demonetized videos informing people of what he has learned? All the while trying to make a living on people’s intense interest in all things space related? Most of his viewership is not interested in things alien, but the new and novel ways mankind is approaching space and its uses.

He makes no secret of how he is financed. Why does that invalidate his findings and opinions?

“builds up to detonation” ???

Drink the Koolaid.
—

Well, I’m rapidly losing respect for you and your anti-space opinions. You should just stick to earth-bound subjects where you at least have some credibility.

--- "Drink the Koolaid."

An interesting exchange between you two. A wee bit more on "Angry Astronaut" who never was an astronaut, and whose "anger" is a shtick to attract loyal sources of money.

WHO is the Angry Astronaut? Streamed live on Dec 19, 2020
Circa 51:20 minutes, "Well, I'm gonna put it out there right now. Uh, I'm a drug addict in recovery. I'm a heroin addict in recovery. Um, I'll just flat out say it right now."

A heroin addict for "many years." And over many years.