All the unresolved questions after ‘alien spaceship’ 3I/atlas handed by means of photo voltaic system
Harvard’s UFO-hunting astronomer Avi Loeb says interstellar object 3I/ATLAS still has strange, unresolved clues – from its near-perfect planetary-plane path to odd jets
New questions are emerging from the “alien spaceship” 3I/ATLAS(Image: Harvard University)
New questions are still emerging from the “alien spaceship” 3I/ATLAS that has been blasting through our Solar System. As a result, Harvard’s most headline-grabbing astrophysicist Avi Loeb says there are still unsolved details to the mystery.
Loeb, who has repeatedly gone viral for suggesting mysterious objects could be ET tech, addressed 3I/ATLAS in a new Q&A on his Medium blog with the founder of a Croatian science and space publication.
Loeb said “fuller” data now suggests 3I/ATLAS “displayed the chemical composition and speed of an iceberg which originated from a star that is about twice as old as the Sun”. But he added there were standout anomalies, starting with its path.
3I/ATLAS has been notable for blasting through our Solar System(Image: Fox News)
He explained that it came within “5 degrees from the orbital plane of the planets around the Sun”, which he said equates to “a random chance of a fraction of a percent”. Then there’s what Loeb described as bizarre behaviour for a typical comet.
He claimed it showed “a major anti-tail jet pointed at the Sun and three mini-jets that are symmetrically organised around its nucleus instead of a standard cometary tail”. He also said it released organic molecules, plus “a deuterium abundance that is a thousand times higher than the cosmic value”.
“It is possible that the organic molecules indicate the potential for microbial life in its deep interior,” he said, before adding: “Or that its unusual trajectory implies that its cometary appearance represents a Trojan Horse inside of which a technological civilisation planted probes inside of it, but we have no direct evidence for any of these possibilities.”
Artist’s impression shows the first interstellar object discovered in the Solar System, ‘Oumuamua’(Image: ESA/Hubble/NASA/ESO/M.Kornmesser / SWNS)
The Q&A also revealed what Loeb and the Galileo Project say they’re doing to avoid future mysteries slipping past. He said a joint analysis found that “8% of the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) are birds,” explaining: “The periodic fluctuations in the amount of heat emitted by these UAP is the result of birds flapping their wings.”
Loeb said triangulation can help settle what objects really are by measuring distance, and he outlined a new observatory concept, now funded for construction at the old residence of Carl Sagan in Ithaca. “A passive radar system will identify UAP in the sky and steer a 0.7-meter sized telescope to obtain a high-resolution image and a spectrum of the UAP,” he said.
“The high-resolution image will allow us to identify fine details… and the spectrum will allow us to identify the chemical composition.”
Loeb believes space could be packed with visitors. He estimated “of order a quadrillion (10^15) interstellar objects larger than a football field” could exist out to the Solar System’s edge — if they move randomly. But he added that if any are guided, they could cluster towards us, “similar to bees which are clustered around flowers”.
H warned: “We should not confuse… that a theoretical idea claims a scientific fact.” He quoted Sherlock Holmes: “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
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