Decoding 3I/Atlas with Harvard Astrophysicist Avi Loeb

A massive interstellar visitor named 3I/Atlas is currently traveling through our solar system, and it's unlike anything astronomers have ever seen. Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb joins us to unravel the scientific mystery behind this extraordinary object that might be twice the size of the asteroid that eliminated the dinosaurs.

What makes 3I/Atlas so peculiar? Its trajectory perfectly aligns with Earth's orbital plane—a statistical anomaly with only a 0.2% chance of occurring naturally. It will pass remarkably close to Jupiter, Mars, and Venus before reaching its closest approach to the sun when Earth is conveniently positioned on the opposite side. These coincidences have led Professor Loeb to consider whether this object might be technological rather than natural in origin.

As the founding director of Harvard University's Black Hole Initiative and head of the Galileo Project, Loeb brings exceptional credentials to this cosmic detective story. He shares his proposal to intercept 3I/Atlas in March of 2026 using NASA's Juno spacecraft, potentially offering humanity an unprecedented close-up view of an object that has traveled through interstellar space for billions of years. By August or September of this year, we should know whether 3I/Atlas behaves like a conventional comet or asteroid or continues to defy conventional explanations.

Beyond the scientific implications, we explore how discovering extraterrestrial technology might impact a divided humanity. Could an interstellar visitor provide the perspective shift we need to transcend our earthly conflicts? As Loeb poetically suggests, we're preparing for "a blind date of astronomical proportions," and the universe may soon reveal answers to questions we've been asking for generations.

Join us for this fascinating conversation about the boundaries between science and speculation, and what might happen when humanity confronts evidence that we're not alone in the cosmos. Subscribe now to catch our future episodes exploring identity, assumptions, and the stories that shape our understanding of reality.

More Information can be found on Professor Avi Loeb's Harvard page

https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/

Transcript

Introducing 3I/Atlas Mystery

Speaker 1 0:07

Identity versus image, real stories behind assumptions, legacies and labels. Each week we sit down with people whose lives have been touched, shaped or skewed by the weight of a family name, a predecessor's reputation, the ripple of a rumor or the spotlight of someone else's fame. Here are your hosts Michelle Gatchel and Rick Moore.

Why It Might Be Technological

Speaker 2 0:35

Rick, we have a great episode today. I can't wait to talk to our guests. You know, in the news people have been talking about what is called 3i Atlas and it is an object flying through space, headed towards Earth, going by Saturn and Jupiter and Mars, and there's all sorts of questions about is it just a comet, is it an asteroid, or could it possibly be some kind of extraterrestrial object, a probe, like? We have sent probes up through the years into space with messages saying come visit us. Maybe someone actually is checking us out, who knows? But joining us to talk about the possibilities of what this object could be and when it will be nearest to Earth is Avi Laib. He's the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University's Black Hole Initiative. He's the director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and a former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University. Avi, thank you so much for joining us and shedding some light for us on what this object could be.

Speaker 3 1:48

Thanks for having me. It's a great pleasure.

Speaker 2 1:51

Yeah, you know I'm a big space nut and I'm like one of those people that would love to be one of the first people to meet somebody from somewhere else ET, if you will.

Speaker 3 2:03

Well it's will. Well, it's a blind date of astronomical proportions.

Speaker 2 2:10

Yes, for sure. But you know, we're just curious on the science part of this. Something that far away, how can we tell what it's made out of or what it you know? Why do you think it possibly could be an extraterrestrial item?

Speaker 3 2:39

Well, we will be able to tell as it gets closer to the sun. Right now, it there should be a plume of gas and dust around it, because it will get evaporated. The surface, if it has water ice will get warmed up and therefore it will be clear whether it's natural, if that happens. If that happens, however, if it doesn't happen, then the object is very peculiar, because if it has a solid surface rather than a cloud of dust around it, then it's just too big to be reasonable. It's 20 kilometers in diameter, which is about 200 times bigger than the previous object we found from interstellar space. The first one was called Oumuamua, discovered in 2017. And there was nothing in between. So there should be if it's a rock, there should be. Of all, there are 100,000 Oumuamua-sized rocks for every one that is 20 kilometers in diameter, which we haven't seen, and, moreover, there is not enough rocky material in interstellar space to supply a giant rock that is 20 kilometers in diameter every few years. So the thing that really made me wonder whether it might be technological is that its trajectory is very unusual.

Speaker 3 4:08

It actually is exactly in the orbital plane of the Earth around the sun, and the chance of that alignment within five degrees or so is 0.2 percent, only one in 500 cases. And then it also arrives at the sun. The closest approach is when the earth is on the opposite side, so we won't be able to observe it when it's closest. That's the optimal point for a maneuver. It will move in the opposite direction to the motion of the earth around the sun.

Speaker 3 4:39

It's retrograde, and it will move at a speed relative to earth that we cannot bridge with any rockets that we have at our disposal. Uh, it will be almost three times bigger than the maximum speed that we can accomplish with our chemical rockets. So, um, and then it gets close to all the inner planets. So even if you take this trajectory and just arrange for a random arrival time, only one in 20,000 cases will get as close to Jupiter, mars and Venus. And somehow this trajectory was designed to do all of that, and it made me wonder whether it might have been targeting the inner solar system. So that's the origin of my question whether it's technological or not. And science is based on questions and then answering them with data, with observations, with evidence, and so those that want to dismiss the possibility that it's technological are actually not following the scientific method.

Intercepting The Object With Juno

Speaker 2 5:49

What we have too like out with our space station. Is it in a better place at all to see better than Earth, or no?

Speaker 3 5:57

No, it's too close to Earth. All of our telescopes locally are too close. But a couple of days ago, I wrote a paper that suggested actually using a spacecraft near Jupiter that could intercept 3I Atlas, because it will come very close to Jupiter on March 16th 2026. And I showed that this spacecraft called Juno that is currently orbiting Jupiter. The plan was to send it into Jupiter in the middle of September this year, just because it finished its mission, but I'm suggesting, together with two collaborators, that we give it a nudge in the opposite direction Instead, plunging it into jupiter and letting it get farther from jupiter, and then, if we do it on the 9th of september 2025, it will be able to get to uh, to intercept the path of three eye atlas in march 2026. So, uh, that is something I'm proposing to nasa to do. We should see if they follow on that.

Speaker 4 7:07

That's interesting, very interesting. So on the size of this, I mean, I've read certain things that say that it might be the size of Manhattan. Is that accurate?

Speaker 3 7:20

Well, if it's a solid object, it's bigger than Manhattan. It's about 20 kilometers in diameter. It's actually twice as large as the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago. That's a huge object. Of course, the alternative is that it's not that big. It's actually at least 20 times smaller, less than a kilometer in size. At least 20 times smaller, less than a kilometer in size. And then what we imagine as being a bigger thing is the cloud of dust surrounding the nucleus of this comet. That would be the simplest way to accommodate all the facts, but still, the trajectory will be unusual and the message there would be yes, it's a comet. The trajectory will be unusual, the message there would be yes, it's a comet, and for some mysterious reason, it chose this trajectory by chance.

Speaker 4 8:16

Interesting, interesting.

Speaker 2 8:19

Yeah, I'm excited and it is amazing that we could use possibly this thing by Jupiter to. Would we bump into it? How would we change that trajectory?

Speaker 3 8:35

Juno, which is the spacecraft near Jupiter, has a nudge in the right direction on the 9th of September. It needs a push by firing the engine. It needs a push of over 2.6 kilometers per second. Then, by mid-March 2026, it will intercept the path of 3I Atlas, because it comes very close to Jupiter.

Speaker 2 9:06

Interesting, that would be super cool.

Previous Interstellar Visitors

Speaker 3 9:09

Yeah, I hope NASA will pay attention and respond to that.

Speaker 4 9:13

Yeah, how close does it have to get before you can really see what size it is? Do you know if it's gases around it or if it really is a solid object?

Speaker 3 9:21

Well, I think within a month or two it will get close enough for it to appear as a comet, like previous comets appeared, and therefore we should know the answer in August or September.

Speaker 4 9:36

Okay, what happens when an interstellar coming into our solar system does anything happen to this as it breaks through?

Speaker 3 9:46

I don't know enough about, except if there is ice on the surface, when it gets close to the sun, that evaporates, and if it's a fragile object, it could basically disintegrate at that point, and so we might get some fireworks. The closest approach is October 29th, and I just learned that some people are investing in a bet on whether it will. It will be a technological or a comet, and so people are willing to bet on that, and we should see whether they make money or not yeah, I'm sure vegas is all over that one.

Speaker 2 10:34

Um, so I I read a little bit that you have had prior studies that have suggested that we've had extraterrestrial in the area. I'm curious what those are.

Speaker 3 10:50

Well, so Oumuamua was the first object discovered by a telescope in Hawaii. The name means a scout, and it was about the size of a football field 100 meters and it was very strange because the amount of sunlight reflected from it changed by a factor of 10 as it was tumbling. So it meant that it has a very extreme shape, most likely flat, and, moreover, it was pushed away from the sun by some mysterious force without showing any evidence for evaporation. It was definitely not a comet of the type that we know, and I suggested that it's just the sunlight reflected off it that is pushing it, and since then, the same telescope discovered an object pushed by sunlight. It ended up being a rocket booster that was launched by NASA in 1966.

Speaker 3 11:44

So we definitely have objects produced technologically that show this behavior, and the question is who produced Oumuamua? And that was the question I raised. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough data to figure out the nature of Oumuamua. The second object that came from interstellar space was a comet. It was discovered by an amateur astronomer named Gennady Borisov in 2019. And the third one is this one. So the first and the third appear a little unusual, and the question is whether any of them, or both, might be technological.

Speaker 2 12:29

You know we always hear. I'm just curious to ask you about meteorites hitting Earth right and the possibility of micro, whatever algae, whatever things that could be in those rocks, that from out of other places they could either hatch or come alive again or whatever yeah do we have extraterrestrials on earth already?

Speaker 3 12:53

well, that's an excellent question. I actually worked on another object that was identified by us government satellites that collided with Earth. It appeared as a meteor, it burned up in the atmosphere and we went to the Pacific Ocean to retrieve materials from it, and what you're suggesting is called panspermia the possibility of transferring life microbes, for example, in the course of rocks that come to us from far away. And it's definitely possible, because we know that one of the rocks that came from Mars was not heated to more than 40 degrees Celsius, and if it had in its core, if it had, the microbes, then it would have survived the journey, and so that's within our solar system, from our. It's possible that life was transferred from mars to to earth, because mars cooled first, it's a smaller body, but it's also potentially possible between different stars and then, indeed, interstellar meteors could then bring life to earth, and this is a subject that I'm studying right now, actually for a paper, with my student.

Speaker 2 14:03

So you asked a very good question yeah, you know I have crystals with little water bubbles in them, right, that somehow got stuck in this crystal when the crystal was formed, so that's what makes me think it's got to be something that can happen from outer space rocks too. You just don't know what's coming.

Speaker 3 14:30

Right, we have to be open-minded and definitely life can be delivered in the interior of a rock that is big enough to protect, of course, the microbes out of cosmic rays and other dangerous things out there.

Speaker 2 14:43

So this thing will go past the sun and circle back around till next year and come back around.

Speaker 3 14:49

No, it's unbound to the sun. That's why it's called interstellar, because it came from outside the solar system and it will presumably move out. Unless it's a spacecraft, then it can do a maneuver when it gets closest to the sun and, in principle, stay bound to the solar system and visit us. That's the interesting possibility that we should keep our eyes open to figure out if it does it or not. And if it doesn't come out from the other side of the sun and um, the way we expect, then I I think the stock market may crash a lot, of, a lot of frightened people yeah, it could create a panic and you know it's one of those existential threats that we never talk about.

Speaker 2 15:42

We talk about artificial intelligence, about biological warfare or climate change or asteroid impact, but in principle, alien tech is also a risk, right yeah, sure is and you know our, our movies and television don't really do us any good to prepare for this, because we've gone from like war of the worlds to et and everything in between and yeah, the thing is that, then, the imagination of hollywood, the directors, is limited to the experiences we have on earth and they just extrapolate from that.

Speaker 3 16:21

But when we have a blind date with a visitor from interstellar space, all bets are off. You know, it might be something we we cannot even imagine.

Speaker 3 16:31

So I'm hoping I'm sending out my address to the universe well, yeah, many, many of us are looking for uplifting news from the sky because we are not very happy at what happens on earth right now, you know. So all of our politics is based on looking down and, um, you know, people are engaged in conflicts and my hope is that by finding sort of an interstellar visitor which might play the role of a messiah, you know, it will bring a different perspective to human, to the future of humanity and and we might do better than we did in the past yeah, that would be amazing yeah, like that movie.

Speaker 3 17:14

Uh, don't look up, right yes, that that was a very realistic scenario where most people just dismiss and that includes people in academia dismiss the possibility and just ignore it until it hits us.

Speaker 4 17:31

Yeah. You're head in the sand. Gosh, you're troublesome.

Speaker 2 17:36

Well, you have such a worldly perspective and other worldly perspective, I would say I wanted to ask you just your take on. You know, being born in Israel, what is going on right now?

Speaker 3 17:51

Well, I think it's similar to a situation where someone drags you into the mud and then you get dirty, and it's a struggle in an environment that is very hostile.

Speaker 3 18:05

And one of the main reasons for the establishment of Israel was to have a country for the Jewish people after the Holocaust, so that their existence would not be compromised as they live in foreign countries and they could take care of their own security. But the situation with Gaza became extremely complex because it started with a violent act of terrorism and the response to that was very harsh. And the response to that was very harsh and in my mind, the best way out of it for the future would be a political arrangement, and that can be done with other countries within the Middle East, and my hope is that there will be some sense of coexistence. That's my hope, but both sides are not trusting each other after what happened, so it may take a while, it may not happen. There are extremists on both sides that drive the agenda. It's sort of similar to social media, where the loudest voices are the ones at the extremes, and we need to somehow mitigate that.

Speaker 4 19:23

Yeah, meet in the middle.

Speaker 2 19:25

Do you find in your field? Other countries share information along these lines with like about extraterrestrial things that are headed our way?

Speaker 3 19:38

Oh well, astronomers discovered the interstellar objects only over the past eight years, so there is not a long history here, and there were only three objects. So I mean science, astronomy, is based on cooperation, international cooperation. Then there is the whole question of objects in the Earth's atmosphere, unidentified, anomalous phenomena, that they are called, and the intelligence agencies report about such incidents. They cannot figure out, and I think that indeed, scientific inquiry is needed. That's the rationale for the Galileo project that I'm leading, and we are building several observatories to monitor the sky and use artificial intelligence to identify any outliers, objects that are not human-made.

Speaker 2 20:31

Very cool.

Speaker 4 20:32

Yeah, very interesting.

Speaker 2 20:33

Yeah Well, I want to thank you so much for joining us and sharing your thoughts on 3i Atlas, because I cannot wait to see when it gets closer. We're going to have to talk again.

Speaker 3 20:45

Me too me too, and if I had an opportunity, if I were told that I have a terminal disease, only a limited time left to live, I would love to be on the spacecraft Juno along its path to intercept the 3i Atlas, because the view must be amazing when you get close to an object that traveled for billions of years in interstellar space Unreal.

Closing Thoughts On Space Exploration

Speaker 4 21:09

Yeah very cool, it's amazing. Yeah, I appreciate your time.

Speaker 3 21:14

Thank you for having me. It was a great pleasure.

Speaker 1 21:18

Thanks for tuning in to Identity vs Image. Next week, another guest opens up about their true identity that they wish more people would see, only to have it clouded by assumptions, legacies or labels. You won't want to miss their story, so be sure to join us. Don't forget to like and follow our podcast to help us grow.