[HN Gopher] Is the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS alien technology...
___________________________________________________________________
Is the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS alien technology? [pdf]
https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/comets/3i-atlas/
Author : jackbravo
Score : 68 points
Date : 2025-08-04 12:48 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lweb.cfa.harvard.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (lweb.cfa.harvard.edu)
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I hope this gets some discussion here. A fascinating paper to
| think about.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Fun to think about, but think about this: as soon as we have
| the tech to start catching sight of these things, we start
| seeing them yearly.
|
| While that does not automatically suggest that they are not
| technological, they are not likely to be hostile.* We've likely
| lived through tens of thousands of them passing through.
|
| *Unless you subscribe to the "they are among us" viewpoint.
| That crazy well has no bottom.
| Teever wrote:
| It really isn't.
|
| One of the authors (Abraham Loeb) is well known for writing
| salami-sliced papers that have tenuous and non-testable
| premises.
|
| You should be skeptical of anything he writes after watching
| this:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY985qzn7oI&t=1440s
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Yes, this. Here's Loeb 2 years ago on Oumuamua - was it
| Aliens?
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/astronomer-avi-
| lo...
|
| https://earthsky.org/space/oumuamua-a-comet-avi-loeb-
| respond...
|
| Here's Loeb on space dust - was it Aliens?
|
| https://www.livescience.com/space/extraterrestrial-
| life/alie...
|
| He's doing what he usually does. It's fun to think about, but
| not to be taken too seriously or regarded as anything unique.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| What is a salami-sliced paper?
| Teever wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing_tactics#Salami
| _...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_publishable_unit
| sgt101 wrote:
| It's weaponised language that pseudo academics hurl around
| at each other to try and denigrate the research outputs of
| other people. In the distant past it had a meaning which
| was that research was being published in small parts in
| order to get more academic kudos from it, but now literally
| all research is published this way based on the judgement
| of the submitter about what they can get accepted where.
|
| In this case Loeb seems to have decided to delight in
| publishing out-there ideas, probably with a bit of a
| mission to open up debate and widen the range of acceptable
| topics in the field of astronomy for younger less
| established researchers. Basically, he's at a point in his
| career where he simply doesn't care what anyone things of
| him and his research and so he's spending credit so that if
| someone younger and more at risk than him comes up with a
| startling idea they will hopefully be more likely to share
| it.
|
| I think it's a good thing, obviously a bunch of people
| really don't.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Pretty terrible and dishonest video. The author should feel
| bad.
|
| They they throw up the following quote, omitting the first
| half. then bash him thinking this is the only explanation.
|
| >Considering an artificial origin, one possibility is that
| 'Oumuamua is a lightsail, floating in interstellar space as a
| debris from an advanced technological equipment'
|
| I think it speaks to a greater dispute about what topics are
| proper to think about, discuss, or even enjoy.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| "If this is the case, then two possibilities follow: first that
| its intentions are entirely benign and second they are malign."
|
| There is a third: undecided.
|
| "At the heart of this, is a question any self-respecting
| scientist will have had to address at some point in their career:
| 'is an outlier of a sample a consequence of expected random
| fluctuation, or is there ultimately a sound reason for its
| observed discrepancy?' A sensible answer to this hinges largely
| on the size of the sample in question, and it should be noted
| that for interstellar objects we have a sample size of only 3,
| therefore rendering an attempt to draw inferences from what is
| observed rather problematic."
|
| Not only the heart of the question, but of the paper.
|
| Still fun, though!
| aiaikzkdbx wrote:
| > If this is the case, then two possibilities follow: first
| that its intentions are entirely benign and second they are
| malign
|
| Even framing this objects actions using human concepts (benign,
| malign) is very short sighted. It's possible any alien life
| experiences complexities were fundamentally unable to
| comprehend (there's some good sci fi short stories that explore
| this).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It's possible any alien life experiences complexities were
| fundamentally unable to comprehend_
|
| Possible. But I'd argue unlikely. We can't make many
| assumptions about alien life, generally. We can about a
| technological civilisation that sends out interstellar
| probes.
| tialaramex wrote:
| A sufficiently advanced technology might make the
| construction of probes trivial, so that it has no great
| significance to its creators - the "Roadside picnic"
| situation. Our unfathomable advanced technology is their
| disposable object. "Why did you send us this probe?" would
| be like asking America to account for a discarded Coke can.
| "I dunno, probably somebody was thirsty? What the fuck are
| you asking us for?"
|
| Aliens are completely unknowable, that's the thing most
| fiction trips up on. We don't understand what the hell is
| going on with _other humans_. They 're like us but
| different, their motivations sometimes are mysterious or
| maybe they don't have motivations at all? It's confusing,
| and those aren't even a different _species_ let alone
| aliens.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _sufficiently advanced technology might make the
| construction of probes trivial, so that it has no great
| significance to its creators_
|
| The point is they bothered constructing probes.
|
| My cat isn't constructing space probes. If he up and
| began doing so this evening, I would be able to conclude
| certain things about him.
|
| > _would be like asking America to account for a
| discarded Coke can_
|
| You're saying you can't conclude anything useful about
| American culture and civilisation from a discarded Coke
| can? (As well as the act of casually discarding it.)
|
| > _Aliens are completely unknowable, that 's the thing
| most fiction trips up on_
|
| Aliens, yes. Aliens who make contact with us, no. The
| latter is a subset that requires certain attributes and
| heavily implies others.
| ben_w wrote:
| > You're saying you can't conclude anything useful about
| American culture and civilisation from a discarded Coke
| can? (As well as the act of casually discarding it.)
|
| Not the op, but I would aver that we have a good chance
| of concluding false things from the alien version of a
| discarded Coke can.
|
| Given the subject, I would point to the actor who played
| the lead role in "The Gods Must Be Crazy" (a story about
| a discarded coke glass bottle), who did not understand
| the money he was given for the role:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C7%83xau_|=Toma
| tialaramex wrote:
| > The point is they bothered constructing probes.
|
| Right, why did somebody make this metal cylinder covered
| in elaborate symbology and then place it here? Was this
| place of great importance to them? What were they trying
| to communicate to me by constructing the cylinder and
| placing it?
|
| It's just a discarded coke can. _You_ are the one who
| decided it 's required to have great significance. If you
| haven't read "Roadside Picnic" I suggest at least reading
| a summary.
| jerf wrote:
| This isn't really that important. I don't care if the probe
| is here because of _magh 'Kveh_ or because its creators are
| really motivated to _zzzzssszsezesszzesz_. What I care about
| is whether it 's going to be benign (which includes just
| cruising through doing nothing) or malevolent _to me_. I don
| 't even care if the aliens think they are doing us a favor by
| coming to a screeching halt, going full-bore at Earth, and
| converting our ecosystem into a completely different one that
| they think is "better" for whatever reason. However
| _gurgurvivick_ that makes them feel, _I 'm_ going to classify
| that as a malign act and take appropriate action... because
| what else can I even do?
|
| And from that perspective, "benign" and "malign" aren't that
| hard to pick up on. They are relative to humanity, and there
| is nothing wrong with that. In fact it would be pathological
| to not care about how the intentions are relative to their
| effect on humanity.
|
| Whatever happens, it's not like we can actually cause an
| interstellar incident at this phase of our development.
| Anything that they would interpret as an interstellar
| incident they were going to anyhow (e.g. "how _dare_ you
| prevent our probe from eliminating your species? ") and that
| responsibility is on them, not us. You can't blame a toddler
| that can barely tie their shoelaces for international
| incidents, likewise for us and interstellar incidents.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| > and converting our ecosystem into a completely different
| one that they think is "better" for whatever reason.
|
| You could theoretically be convinced that they are right
| and resign yourself to death.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| One problem with your assumption here is that "humanity"
| has no definition of "benign" and "malign".
|
| If we did have such a thing, extrapolated coherent volition
| would be solved and that would solve half of the AI
| alignment problem.
|
| This hypothetical "alien" problem is actually pretty much
| equivalent to the AI alignment problem. One half is, we
| don't know what we want, and the other half is, even if we
| knew... we don't know how to make "them" do what we want.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Sort of the impetus (which at least gives us a reason unlike
| the movie adaptation Edge of Tomorrow but is not as important
| as the impact) in the novella All You Need is Kill.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| And a fourth: irrelevant.
|
| If I accidentally step on a bug and squish it, it's surely not
| good for the bug, but I had no intentions towards it one way or
| another.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| > If this is the case, then two possibilities follow: first
| that its intentions are entirely benign and second they are
| malign.
|
| And why do we assume that, if humans can have a whole spectrum
| of motivations from "entirely benign" to "entirely malign,"
| that a presumably-much-more advanced civilization can't?
| criddell wrote:
| > We show that 3I/ATLAS approaches surprisingly close to Venus,
| Mars and Jupiter, with a probability of [?] 0.005%.
|
| What probability are they talking about?
| pbmonster wrote:
| If you take a random trajectory through our solar system, your
| chance to pass this close to three planets is < 0.005%.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Specifically a random angle.
|
| "The likelihood for such a perfect alignment of the orbital
| angular momentum vector around the Sun for Earth and 3I/ATLAS
| is p(5*/57*)2/(4p) = 2x10-3."
|
| Sloppy sloppy work.
| pbmonster wrote:
| I also misread that. The 0.005% is in relation to this:
|
| > In the following analysis we assume that 3I/ATLAS is on
| its current orbit but vary the time-of-entry into the Solar
| System (or equivalently the time of perihelion), assuming
| 3I/ATLAS could have come at any time into the Solar System,
| and happened to do so such that it came within the observed
| closest approaches of Venus, Mars and Jupiter. The
| probability of this is 0.005
|
| So exact same trajectory, but analyzed over a long period
| of time. If it came any earlier or later, it would almost
| never get this close to exactly those three planets.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The aliens are going to be so annoyed when they realise
| they missed the interesting one.
| MarkusQ wrote:
| No matter how tempting the straight line, I will not make
| the joke.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| You've written too much or too little. The Internet
| demands to hear it.
| taneq wrote:
| How many objects go through our solar state each year? More
| than 200?
|
| Are their trajectories uniformly distributed?
| Zigurd wrote:
| Evidently not the probability of all the other coincidences
| that could be the basis of post hoc ergo propter hoc analysis.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| I noticed that about the orbit as well. It does seem a little
| surprising.
| dvh wrote:
| "You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was
| coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through
| the parking lot. And you won't believe what happened. I saw a
| car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the
| millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance
| that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!" --
| Richard Feynman, Six Easy Pieces
| camillomiller wrote:
| They read Rendez-vous with Rama one time too much.
| fourseventy wrote:
| I just picked up the book this week so it was curious timing to
| see this post!
| rookderby wrote:
| I'm in favor of spending more resources on research projects like
| building a probe to intercept one of these interstellar objects.
| It would be worth the investment to go and see, and it looks like
| the Vera Rubin will give us several targets.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It would be worth the investment to go and see_
|
| Why? I'd rather we continue surveying from a distance while
| sending probes to places we _know_ will be interesting, like
| Titan and Europa.
| f6v wrote:
| Well, we probably have resources for both (as The Humanity).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _we probably have resources for both_
|
| In the long run, yes. Possibly even in the medium term. In
| the short term, no--we're limited by our technological
| capability.
| Muromec wrote:
| If it is a probe, its waiting to be intercepted and
| contacted, because this is how sentient space-worthy species
| find about each other.
| jojobas wrote:
| We don't quite have the technology. It was spotted a month ago,
| will cross inside Martian orbit in another 2 months, for
| another 3 months. The fastest we can get to around Martian
| orbit is 7 months.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| > The fastest we can get to around Martian orbit is 7 months.
|
| This is not accurate. Viking got there in <4 months, and we
| have the technology to do it even faster, if needed. The long
| duration transits are often the least energy (Hohmann
| transfer) and that's why we use them. Planetary alignment is
| also a big factor.
|
| Anyway, there are currently proposals to have probes
| lingering in high orbits and intercept interstellar visitors
| (maybe not as fast as 3I), and Rubin should give us plenty of
| targets when it gets online.
|
| As an interesting tidbit, 3I was found in the Rubin data
| ~2weeks before it was spotted. Should be a perfect exercise
| in refining the discovery algorithms.
| jojobas wrote:
| Viking probes got there in about 11 months. You might be
| thrown off by an AI artifact.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| We don't have the technology to catch up to _this one_ , but
| what could we do with the next one that's detected earlier?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| what's stopping you?
| Bender wrote:
| I selfishly would rather invest in mining asteroids so that we
| may one day be qualified to manipulate their movements and
| prevent strikes of any planets in our solar system _and to get
| rich of course_. Even if it takes a few hundred years to become
| qualified for such mining that is a tiny blip in this spacetime
| and could mitigate at least some civilization ending events.
| The process of heading that direction is likely to result in
| many advancements in technology and slightly safer playgrounds
| to develop more intelligent androids assuming they don 't get
| hacked resulting in dragging and flinging 20+ mile wide metal
| asteroids at us.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Do we have enough headsup on these to even plan such a mission?
| Was under the impression that by the time we realize they're
| there, they're already halfway out the door...
|
| What's the minimum time to intercept something like this? Do we
| need 6 or 7 years, or is 3 years enough?
| gnabgib wrote:
| _Feasibility of a Spacecraft Flyby with the Third
| Interstellar Object 3I /Atlas_
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44649150
|
| _Intercepting 3I /Atlas at Its Closest Approach to Jupiter
| with Juno Spacecraft_
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44717239
| EagnaIonat wrote:
| If anything ends in a question mark, the answer is likely "no".
|
| This was much more interesting: https://science.nasa.gov/solar-
| system/comets/3i-atlas
| digitalsushi wrote:
| If news articles end with a question mark. A little refinement
| upon your claim
| card_zero wrote:
| Inevitably this makes people write headlines like "Is
| Betteridge's Law Valid?"
|
| https://hekint.org/2024/06/03/is-betteridges-law-valid/
| dang wrote:
| I put that link in the top text for added context. Thanks!
| MalbertKerman wrote:
| No (Betteridge, 2009).
| mattlondon wrote:
| Loeb. That sounds familiar - is this the same Loeb who was
| hunting for molten alien rocket fragments on the sea floor? What
| happened to that?
| moi2388 wrote:
| The very same. And also the same guy who claimed `Oumuamua is
| likely to be an alien spacecraft.
|
| I don't know what Harvard is doing lately, but perhaps they
| ought not to talk about astronomy anymore if this nonsense is
| all they can contribute to the discussion.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| i do think loeb is nonsensical but is there any a priori
| reason to think that academia should not speculate about
| extraterrestrial intelligence in general?
| Zigurd wrote:
| Yes. Most people don't understand either physical and
| chronological distance enough to understand that contact
| with an alien civilization, if it exists or ever did exist,
| is vanishingly unlikely to happen because of time, physical
| changes to solar systems, distance, the endurance of
| civilizations, the speed of light, etc. Loeb is pandering
| to the UFO-susceptible.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| what do you think of this?
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/394040040_Aligne
| d_m...
| Zigurd wrote:
| I don't think too highly of this, from the abstract:
| _Notably, the candidate coincides in time with the
| Washington D.C. 1952 UFO flyover, and another (a
| candidate) falls within a day of the peak of the 1954 UFO
| wave_
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| wow. ok. didn't even look at the data.
|
| the crazy thing is that you are so biased against these
| researchers that you have even shut out the possibility
| that these (and the DC UFOs) are extremely high formation
| flying USAF vehicles (for example).
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| "Endurance of civilizations" is the key parameter here.
| The universe is almost 14 billion years old. Colonizing
| the Milky Way only takes 1 million years if you can
| travel 10% of the speed of light. So time and distance
| aren't significant obstacles for a highly enduring
| civilization.
|
| Given our massive uncertainty about the
| endurance/motives/etc. of super-advanced starfaring
| civiliations, I don't think it's justified to say that
| alien interlopers are "vanishingly unlikely".
| Muromec wrote:
| The only reason is us declaring it seacular matter
| jojobas wrote:
| That's academic freedom for you.
| taylorius wrote:
| If I recall, he found a few small bits of metal and declared
| victory.
| lawlessone wrote:
| I get the impression he's doing real science but using
| outrageous ideas to gain funding.
|
| The tiny metal spheres stuff was interesting even though it's
| not aliens.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Per betteridge's law: no.
| cyberlimerence wrote:
| Does Loeb plan to apply this thesis to every interstellar object
| ?
| moi2388 wrote:
| Not just interstellar ones, also any rock you might find on the
| ocean floor..
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| The three known interstellar object to pass through the solar
| system were 1I/`Oumuamua, 2I/Borisov and now 3I/ATLAS.
|
| Did he give Borisov this treatment? It seems not, so then the
| answer is "no, only about two thirds of them".
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Even so, the probability that Loeb will hint that 4I/whatever
| could be a probe approaches certainty.
| largbae wrote:
| Based on their approach graphs, if it is an intercept probe it
| seems like the target is Mars.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Off-by-one :)
| WithinReason wrote:
| The data of the aliens was outdated by a few billion years
| Mizza wrote:
| Related to this is Loeb's proposal to nudge the Juno spacecraft,
| currently orbiting Jupiter and soon facing EOL, into the path of
| 3I/Atlas to try to scan it and snap some pictures. I doubt it has
| enough fuel left, but I hope they're looking into it.
|
| https://avi-loeb.medium.com/how-close-can-the-juno-spacecraf...
| mattlondon wrote:
| Even if they have no fuel/not enough fuel, can they at least
| point it in the right direction? Better than nowt?
| ben_w wrote:
| If the probe doesn't have enough fuel to leave Jupiter's
| orbit, we get a better view of it from here with our much
| bigger optics.
|
| Sure, the closest approach of 3I/Atlas to Jupiter is
| 53.56+-0.45 Gm, the closest approach of 3I/Atlas to Earth is
| 268.98+-0.3 Gm -- but we have more and better sensors down
| here.
|
| For photographs in particular, Juno's JunoCam is
| spectacularly _bad_ , because "it was put on board primarily
| for public science and outreach, to increase public
| engagement, with all images available on NASA's website" --
| while it can be used for actual science, at the orbital apsis
| (8.1 Gm) it has a worse resolution, when looking at Jupiter,
| than Hubble gets of Jupiter from LEO (a distance of ~600 Gm
| for https://esahubble.org/images/heic0910q/).
| Zigurd wrote:
| By now, Avi Loeb's recommendations should count against
| whatever he's recommending.
| jpcompartir wrote:
| Most reasoned take is directly from the paper itself:
|
| "We strongly emphasize that this paper is largely a pedagogical
| exercise, with interesting discoveries and strange serendipities,
| worthy of a record in the scientific literature. By far the most
| likely outcome will be that 3I/ATLAS is a completely natural
| interstellar object, probably a comet, and the authors await the
| astronomical data to support this likely origin."
| blisstonia wrote:
| Oh cool, a .PDF I can squint at.
| metalman wrote:
| 3l/Atlas itself is unlikely to be alien technology, but it is
| from way outside our solar system and deserves to be examined as
| closely as possible with every resourse availible, and at this
| point planning for ways to investigate interstellar objects more
| closely needs to be figured out......say, blast it with ultra
| high lasers and see what boils off!
| xoxxala wrote:
| Scott Manley just posted a video:
|
| "Interstellar Comet 3/I Atlas - Probably Isn't An Alien
| Spaceship" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MafmhXwPgmo
|
| (It has more to do with why we can't send a probe to investigate
| 3/I Atlas...)
| thrance wrote:
| More importantly, do we need to reach for aliens everytime
| something slightly out of the ordinary happens in the night sky?
| (No, we do not).
| motza wrote:
| Maybe we are getting close to AGI then
| smlacy wrote:
| Yes, but how did they know that before arriving?
| m3kw9 wrote:
| It's the universe governing body that any species require AGI
| to enter into the "circle". You don't get AGI, you are not
| advanced enough to join the group
| sebastiennight wrote:
| Based on current estimated trajectory, Jupiter is getting
| AGI before us though.
| motohagiography wrote:
| the idea of malign intent ignores the physical economic factors
| that are true everywhere in the universe. The amount of energy it
| takes to get here from the next closest place, and the necessary
| probability that there is at least one other planet with every
| element we have, in much higher quantities, and closer to them,
| precludes any motive to wipe us out.
|
| given the effort involved and the alternatives, the only possible
| reason to contact us is benevolent. also, if there is a single
| other civilization within range of contacting us, statistically
| and necessarily, there are also millions, if not billions of
| others to choose from.
|
| No, there is no malign intent. Even considering it reveals some
| very mid reasoning. We are very likely emerging up the
| evolutionary scale to become the stupidest intelligent thing in
| the universe, but only just over the line of what passes for
| intelligence among space faring civilizations. The only
| concievable risk is from ourselves.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| I agree that all makes benign much more likely - the Dark
| Forest arguments mostly come down to "if aliens are as bad as
| humans (especially as bad as we were hundreds or thousands of
| years ago), we're doomed".
|
| That seems extremely unlikely, we're far from advanced enough
| to send a probe to another solar system, by the time we are,
| I'd like to think we'll be even less likely to want to
| exterminate or enslave anyone...
| psunavy03 wrote:
| I don't see why people keep conflating "advanced"
| technological civilizations with civilizations that happen to
| be "advanced" within the bounds of that particular person's
| individual moral worldview.
|
| These are not the same things and "advancing" on one axis
| does not require "advancing" on the other axis, even taking
| into account the fact that beyond a certain point, one
| person's moral viewpoints are not necessarily universalizable
| in the Kantian sense.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| I think you might be interested in reading about the
| orthogonality thesis, which addresses exactly that. There is
| very little reason to believe that advanced technology goes
| along advancement along the scale of (your own) morality
| axis.
|
| All points of that 2D graph are available.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| Religion is a good example of a solid good reason, even from a
| human standpoint, for undertaking large projects without a
| positive expected economic ROI.
|
| And even amongst humans there are many other such factors (ego
| of the current leader, etc.)
|
| You're also making economic assumptions that might be wrong at
| an advanced enough level of technology.
|
| A man from the 14th century Americas might understandably
| believe that "the idea of malign intent
| ignores the physical economic factors that are true everywhere
| on this planet. The amount of energy it takes to get here from
| across the Atlantic, and the necessary probability that there
| is at least one other country with every element we have, in
| much higher quantities, and closer to them, precludes any
| motive to wipe us out. Given the effort involved and the
| alternatives, the only possible reason to contact us is
| benevolent."
|
| A few generations later, that tribe would no longer be recorded
| in history, wiped out by war and smallpox brought on ships from
| across the world.
| xqcgrek2 wrote:
| It's Avi Loeb. He's considered a crackpot now.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Jesus, I fucking hope so.
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