‘Spaceship’ 3I/ATLAS has ‘swarm of objects’ behind it – which tells us the place it is going
In the latest update on 3I/ATLAS, Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb has focused in on the ‘swarm of objects’ seemingly floating behind it which may tell us where the comet is headed
The 3I/ATLAS ‘spaceship’ may have a “swarm of non-evaporating objects behind it”, according to a Harvard astrophysicist. Since July this year, the mysterious space object has captivated the public and left astronomers scratching their heads as it journeys through our solar system.
In a recent blog post, astrophysicist Avi Loeb has presented a new theory about 3I/ATLAS, suggesting that the “swarm” of space junk behind it could tell us which direction it’s headed.
Loeb wrote: “Over the month of November 2025, post-perihelion images of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS showed a tear-drop shape of its coma with an extension by about an arcminute towards the Sun.
“If the anti-tail is indeed associated with a swarm of non-evaporating objects around 3I/ATLAS, the interesting question is what is the nature of these objects? Are they rocky fragments or something else?”
Loeb suggested that the strange “anti-tail” could even tell us where the UFO was headed.
He wrote: “This configuration would explain why the teardrop shape towards the Sun existed with a similar angular extent in the glow around 3I/ATLAS as it was approaching the Sun as well as it is now when 3I/ATLAS is moving away from the Sun.”
The interstellar comet could also be home to a series of erupting “ice volcanoes”, according to an intriguing new theory that might shed light on its internal composition.
These cryovolcanoes can be explained by the comet’s makeup, as per a study presented on the preprint server arXiv. The research suggests that the comet bears similarities to icy trans-Neptunian objects – dwarf planets and other cosmic bodies that orbit the sun.
If this holds true, it implies that despite originating from a different cosmic neighbourhood, the enigmatic comet shares striking similarities with objects within our own solar system.
Josep Trigo-Rodríguez, the lead author of the study and a leading researcher at the Institute of Space Sciences (CSIC/IEEC), expressed his surprise to Live Science: “We were all surprised. Being a comet formed in a remote planetary system, it is remarkable that the mixture of materials forming the surface of the body has resemblance with trans-Neptunian objects, bodies formed at [a] large distance from the Sun but belonging to our planetary system.”
In an article penned earlier this week, Avi Loeb discussed the enigmatic comet: “Following its detection on July 1, 2025, the light from the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS showed pulsating variability with a period of 16.16 hours.
“Over the past month, images of 3I/ATLAS showed multiple jets. If the mass loss in the jets is pulsed periodically, the resulting coma would display periodic variability in its scattering of sunlight.”
The Harvard professor disclosed in November that the “multi-jet structure” will reach its closest point to Earth on December 19, potentially marking our nearest encounter yet with alien life and technology.
