Blog #59 The Comet from Outside our Solar System

On July 1, 2024, 3I/ATLAS was discovered by the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Lat Alert System) survey telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, and reported to the Minor Planet Center on July 1, 2025. This caused quite a stir in the scientific community.

One of the reasons was it was only the third interstellar object humans had discovered. 1I/2017 U1 (commonly known a ‘Unmuamua), and 2I/Borisov on August 30, 2019, and now 3I/ATLAS. Secondly, it is an unusual object, being made of pure nickel and not nickel and iron The plume is only 5 percent water, and it’s blasting towards the Sun. Finally, “If its composition is not found in nature, it must, by definition, be artificial.” Dr Avi Loeb, Harvard Astrophysicist, Dr. Loeb has stated and that there’s a 40% probability it is alien technology.

Quite a statement, so I decided to look into it. Much of the drama has passed, but I think it’s worth exploring now that the hubbub has died down.

Image 3 An Interstellar Object coming in

So, first I’d like to define “interstellar object”:

An interstellar object, found in the naming (i.e.. 3I/ATLAS) is an object that has entered the solar system from interstellar space.

The solar system, for those not in the know, is our solar system, the home of Earth. Three objects have come in and caused some kerfuffle, and rightly so.

Second criteria for the excitement: These objects don’t follow a closed orbital path around the Sun; they continue on, just passing through the solar system.

Image 4 This artist’s impression shows the first interstellar asteroid, `Oumuamua.

Our first visitor was ‘Onmuamua, an asteroid. It was discovered by Canadian Robert Weryk on October 19, 2017, using the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope on the volcano Haleakalā in Maui, and was given the name ‘Oumuamua.

“Oumuamua” is defined in a 1922 dictionary of the Hawaiian language (Source 8 is the language dictionary. For some reason the page listed is not for this word “‘Oumuamua). “Oumuamua is defined as “the foremost soldier or the front rank in battle,” and “a scout; one sent forward before a battle to discover the position of the enemy.” (taken from Source 3)

Again Dr Avi Loeb, Harvard Astrophysicist, chimes in that three characteristics of ‘Oumuamua reinforce that it is an extraterrestrial spaceship:

1) It’s shape-unpreciedented. 400 and 800 meters long and 35 and 167 meters wide

2) No visible tail

3) Unusual speed and trajectory

In the April 8, 2024, article (Source 2) : OUMUAMUA RETURNS and the SIGNALS it SENDS to EARTH INTRIGUES NASA, the first line spouts NASA Warns That Asteroid Oumuamua Has Begun Sending Radio Messages to Earth. Unfortunately, the article doesn’t tell you anything about the message. I am assuming it is a radio signal, and no one has been able to decode it. The conclusion seems to be it’s a natural phenomenon.

The second interstellar object is 2I/Borisov. A comet discovered by a Crimean amateur astronomer and telescope maker, Gennadiy Brisov, on 29 August 2019 UTX (30 August local time) at his personal Margo Observatory. I think that is awesome!

Mr. Brisov wrote about his discovery and subsequent action:

“I observed it on August 29, but it was August 30 Greenwich Time. I saw a moving object in the frame; it moved in a direction slightly different from that of the main asteroids. I measured its coordinates and consulted the Minor Planet Center database. Turned out, it was a new object. Then I measured the near-Earth object rating, which is calculated from various parameters, and it turned out to be 100%—in other words, dangerous. In such cases, I must immediately post the parameters to the world webpage for confirmation of dangerous asteroids. I posted it and wrote that the object was diffuse and that it was not an asteroid, but a comet.” (Source 10)

Our old friend, Harvard scientist Dr. Avi Loeb, believes, again, that it could be an alien spacecraft approaching Earth. (Source 9)

Image 8 Astrophysicist Avi Loeb demands NASA release the 40-day-old HiRISE images of 3I/ATLAS, criticizing ‘the arrogance of expertise’ for dismissing the object’s non-cometary behavior (blue hue, no tail, unusual acceleration).

Our third interstellar object is what caught my eye. 3I/ATLAS was discovered by the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Lat Alert System) survey telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile. Larry Denneau, senior software engineer and astronomer at the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy (Source 13), was on duty and reported to the Minor Planet Center on July 1, 2025. NASA considers it a comet.

Harvard scientist Dr. Avi Loeb believes 3I/ATLAS is more than a comet. Nickel and iron are always together and called ‘cosmic twins,’ but on this object, they are not. It is pure Nickel.

“Loeb argues that the trajectory of 3I/ATLAS, which falls within just five degrees of the Earth’s path around the sun (the ecliptic plane), has only a 0.2% likelihood of being a random occurrence. Furthermore, he notes that the object’s route took it remarkably close to Venus, Mars, and Jupiter — worlds of significant interest in our own search for life.

“It is as if the object was performing a planetary survey,’ Loeb noted in a recent paper, highlighting that the object reached its closest point to the sun (perihelion) on Oct. 29, 2025, while remaining hidden behind the sun’s glare from Earth’s perspective — an ideal ‘blind spot’ for a covert probe. To Loeb, this ‘fine-tuning’ suggests the possibility of an artificial probe or even an ‘alien mothership’ that could be releasing mini-drones as it passes.” (Source 11)

So, we have found three of these out of our solar system objects. What conclusions have we reached?

Taken from Source 14 “In a recent paper (Source 15) under review for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics, Shokhruz Kakharov and Prof. Abraham Loeb calculated the trajectories of all three interstellar visitors to determine their origins and to apply age constraints. Their results indicate that these ISOs originated in different regions of the Milky Way’s disk and range in age from 1 to several billion years.

“For their purposes, Kakharov and Loeb ran a series of Monte Carlo numerical simulations using the GalPot galactic potential model, a software package designed to calculate the gravitational potential of a galaxy:

“Our analysis revealed that the three ISOs originate from distinct stellar populations with different ages and galactic locations,” said Kakharov.

“Their results showed that 3I/ATLAS is the oldest of the three, with a median age of 4.6 billion years, and that it originated in the Milky Way’s thick disk. This component is thicker than the galaxy’s thin disk (where our sun resides) and is populated by older, lower metallicity stars.

“1I/’Oumuamua is relatively young by comparison, about 1 billion years old, and originated from the thin disk where new stars are still forming. 2I/Borisov falls between them in age, approximately 1.7 billion years old, and originated from the thin disk.

“This diversity suggests that ISOs are ejected from planetary systems throughout the galaxy’s history, not just from young, recently formed systems,” said Kakharov.” (Taken from Source 14)

In conclusion, three objects humans have found jetting through our solar system are from outside our solar system. All three were labeled by Dr. Avi Loeb as possibly or likely to be powered by extraterrestrial beings. The evidence mostly focused on how strange they were, unlike our comets and asteroids.

Elon Musk jumped into the debate to throw cold water on claims of evidence for 3I/ATLAS being an extraterrestrial spaceships. While it is true that there are few comets and asteroids made primarily of nickel, and that the source of any nickel on Earth is from asteroids and comets hitting the planet, Mr. Musk said that if you are mining nickel, it came from a nickel-rich meteorite. However, Mr. Musk says finding pure nickel in a comet doesn’t mean it’s not ‘natural’. He further states that a spaceship made entirely of nickel would be heavy and could wipe out a continent. Not necessarily an ideal building material, which SpaceX would be quite knowledgeable about. One of the biggest problems to solve is how much weight a rocket can carry that has to fight Earth’s gravity to get up and out into space.

A new word for me came up in Mr. Musk’s conversation with Joe Rogan – boffins. It turns out Boffin is an informal word that is more common in the U.K. than in the U.S. It is a relative newcomer to the English language, only appearing toward the end of World War II. The term was probably first applied by British Royal Air Force members to the scientists and engineers working closely with radar technology. The term was soon being more broadly applied to scientists involved in technological research. British speakers also use “boffin” colloquially to refer to academics or intellectuals in general, often in a manner that is synonymous with “nerd” or “egghead.” Looks like a good way to bring scientists down to Earth.

There has been a lot of reporting on Elon Musk and what he thinks. I quoted what he told Joe Rogan on Rogan’s podcast, but I believe he has not said WE’RE ALL DOOMED. In Source 18 a statement caught my eye. “Thus far, in reputable scientific reporting, there is no confirmed statement by Elon Musk that 3I/ATLAS “turned back and confirms” a terrible threat or anything that “we all feared.” The phrase is used in sensationalized headlines and video captions—but that doesn’t constitute scientific evidence.” (From Source 18)

This seems reasonably true. Elon Musk, his opinion and image seems to get hijacked a lot.

“3I/ATLAS” is an interstellar object which has just been found visiting our solar system. It is the third of its kind which has been seen entering from outside the solar system—following 1I/ʻOumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019.

Some of the important observations to date:

It has formed a tail and glowing coma as it approaches the Sun—typical telltale signs of comets.

Its path is hyperbolic (i.e. not being bound by the Sun), i.e. it’s arriving from interstellar space and, after passing through, will be on its way out.

So, these three objects are weird in their composition, size, and trajectory, but does that make them made by alien intelligence? The fact that they come from outside the solar system suggests they may differ in composition and in how they move through our solar system, avoiding capture by the sun.

It was detected that ‘Oumuamua was sending radio signals. Conspiracies are fun, and governments certainly keep things secret. However, NASA did announce the radio messages, and if there was more, I think it would leak out. Mr. Brisov, a telescope maker who discovered 2I/Borisov from his personal Margo Observatory, is a good example of the many independent observers worldwide. I would bet you couldn’t get them to keep quiet.

However, I also ran into two other weird occurrences for 3I/ATLAS. It seems to have its own light. Something, I gather can be explained but images of the it were drawn to look like lighting inside something looking like a spaceship. Secondly, it seemed to have changed direction. This Dr. Loeb wanted to use but it hasn’t gathered much steam. I caution everyone to take this one step at a time. Do not stop looking and investigating. I do not believe we are alone in the Universe (life that is). It would be weird because the Universe is so big, it seems the odds would be so small that Earth did something and no other planet or solar system could match it. Dr. Loeb is correct to question and he does give a percentage not a certainty. This is what science is supposed to be, hypothesize and check. I think the ridicule is overblown and inflated for clicks. If a spaceship came into our solar system it would be very scary to me. If the spaceship was not inhabited by live beings that would be better, but UGGH! This science fiction enthusiast isn’t ready for that. Stories help with imagination broaching the subject but reality can be brutal.

NASA insists 3I/ATLAS is not a spaceship. People have had fun with it, though.

Image 10 NASA insists 3I/ATLAS isn’t aliens

It is widely believed that many interstellar objects have entered our solar system, and some now orbit the sun. The good news is that humans have detected three come in and leave. We’re growing up.

The End

Sources

1. https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/comets/3i-atlas/3i-atlas-facts-and-faqs/

2. https://news.sciandnature.com/2025/04/oumuamua-returns-and-signals-it-sends.html

3. https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/news/a28958/first-interstellar-object-gets-a-name/

4. https://cosmobc.com/interstellar-comet-2i-borisov/

5. https://www.ladbible.com/news/science/elon-musk-3iatlas-comet-alien-conspiracy-joe-rogan-podcast-480907-20251102

6. https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/60665/20251027/avi-loeb-says-3i-atlas-has-40-chance-being-alien-techheres-why.htm

7. https://www.britannica.com/science/interstellar-object

8. https://puke.ulukau.org/?a=d&d=EBOOK-PARKER.2.1.1&e=——-haw-20–1–txt-txPT———–

9. https://article.ancher.ai/static/articles/f9ca9f26c901ff35680236543e832216

10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2I/Borisov