One of my (highly educated and successful) buddies thinks it some sort of alien interstellar probe. I told my 13 year, who keeps up with these kinds of things, and asked what he thinks. He just kind of stared at me and then said "i think it's a comet from outside the solar system." and went back to playing DCS. heh from the mouth of babes..
It was only detected when 4.5 AUs from the Sun (which, I'll also note, exerts significant graviational force on inbound objects). It was already close; we can't currently detect the tens/hundreds/thousands of similar objects likely whizzing past at further distances as we speak.
This thing traveled light years to get here. Possibly over billions of years. 30 million kilometers from Mars and 300 million and 3 billion kilometers from Mars would all be close approaches. Any approach can be claimed to be close; that's the magic trick at play here.
Our robot representatives there were not the ones who spotted it, so what relevance is it that they are there?
I don't think you're responding to my claim, which is that the close passes to Mars and Jupiter seem very unlikely. Of all random trajectories through the solar system at the distance of this body, what fraction of them pass equally close to major planets? I'd even be willing to limit it to trajectories close to the ecliptic plane, because we may be scanning that plane more.
4.5AUs is as close as 0.2AUs from an interstellar standpoint. Both are equally likely, just as every Powerball number is equally likely. Any object of this nature we can spot is going to be quite close with our current detection technology.
Again, your argument is effectively like arguing that 04 24 49 60 65 01 cannot possibly be yesterday's winning Powerball numbers, because it's a 1:300M chance. The game must be rigged!
Now, if the next couple interstellar objects we detect also do a similarly close pass on Jupiter and Mars, there'll be something worth wondering about.
(Similarly, if tomorrow's Powerball numbers are 04 24 49 60 65 02, I'll have questions!)
How cool is it that, as a species, we developed tools to allow us to continue watching an interstellar object zapping the void on the other side of the sun!!!
Seeing how everything is going, though, I strongly feel like we peaked as a species and that, while we'll continue up for a (short) while, the downgrade is just inevitable.
To be clear, we're not looking through the Sun at the object. We're looking past the Sun at the object through a telescope that is positioned to observe the Sun, for the most recent imagery.
I agree with you, but I have been experimenting with image processing using the data available from this satellite (as a hobbyist). Honestly, while it's impressive that we gather data from a piece of technology that's floating in space, the resolution of this is nothing to write home about. If I take anything away from my brief amount of experience with this, it's that we still have a long way to go in terms of the quality of our imaging of our surrounding space.
Anybody else feel like there're just ... too many active plotlines?
It is/isn't the Singularity while we are going and not going into WW III, while Rama is maybe zooming by, while Modern Rome does the whole fall of the Republic nonsense, or maybe doesn't! While the H5N1 thing is still churning away reassorting in pigs!
I appreciate what you're trying to say here, but this was more an infovore glorying in how weird everything is than someone who has too much screen time (I don't, in fact, even use a screen.)
But also sometimes monitoring the world is useful. I'm very glad I was paying attention in February 2020, for instance!
For those unaware, there are a ton of AI generated videos across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook of physicist Brian Cox saying this is an alien spacecraft:
slightly off-topic thought experiment that's been on my mind lately:
to us, the sun appears to be the size of, let's say, a quarter held at arm's length. this is at 93M miles (1AU, or ~8 light minutes) distance. if we moved the sun 100 miles away from earth, it would take up the entire sky. now in the other direction, if we doubled the distance, to 2AU, it would appear to us as half its normal size and 1/4 as bright (irradiance follows inverse square law). at 3AU the sun would be 1/9 as bright and 3x smaller than a quarter. at 100AU, we're talking about brightness of 1/100^2 (one ten-thousandth) the sun's apparent brightness. with me so far?
Sirius A: the brightest star we can see; 25x more luminous than the sun; 2x the size of the sun; 8.6 light YEARS distance (544,000AU) from earth.
if we moved the sun to the same distance as Sirius A, it would appear 296 BILLION times dimmer and 544,000 times smaller. yet Sirius A is easily visible - the brightest star in our sky - despite being only 25x more luminous and 2x larger.
do you see the discrepancy? 25x more luminous doesn't compensate for a 296-billion-fold brightness loss. The numbers we are given don't make sense, not even close. (and this is without considering diffusion, which would make the discrepancy even worse.) i'm not proposing an explanation or a modification to the model, i just think the data don't make sense.
I've found that when I have a thought that seems to contradict the "established" model of the world, I tend to just be missing some critical factor. A recent example is when I thought: "why don't we just use physical objects to communicate information? Wouldn't that be instantaneous?" Turns out, no, pushing on one end of an object only communicates information to the other end at the speed of sound. Not intuitive when you only think about observable experience (it sure seems like if I push a steel bar, the other end moves instantly), but that's how the world works.
In the case of your thought experiment, the critical factor is that our eyes are able to observe and adjust to a very wide range of brightness in different conditions. Sirius A really is billions of times dimmer than the sun to our eyes (hard to find a good reference for that, but this mentions it: https://ecampus.matc.edu/mihalj/astronomy/test5/stellar_magn...).
These are all numbers you just provided, with no source for them.
But even using your numbers, 300 billion is 3x10^11. The Sun provides about 10^5 lux, while starlight overall provides about 10^-4 lux[1], which is a difference of 10^9, meaning the difference between "all the starlight on a dark night" and "just the starlight from Sirius" would be around 10^2, which... seems about right?
Yeah, people get really messed up by just how good our eyes are. (For a close-to-home example, people think indoor plants get a lot closer to sunlight-level amounts than they really do.)
I don't like to discourage questions like that, because they kill curiosity. We know what the likely answer is, but reasonable assumptions are just that. Assumptions. Why not let mind wander about the exciting ( if somewhat hard to consider as possible ) lines of thinking.
Planetary scientist academics are angry because he's getting all of the attention and it isn't even in the field he's most known for previously. Even smart humans are still humans.
Yeah it doesn't instill a lot of confidence in the quality of ivy league credentials when guys like this are running around spouting nonsense. I'm surprised there's not a clause in his employee handbook that says to not be an obvious troll. Kooky science is one thing but this is just the type of person the men with butterfly nets and white coats should be interested
Dr. Avi has a pretty clear point and he goes into details on the JRE released just yesterday. https://youtu.be/EaAun27gftk
What most stand out is the sheer amount of closed mind people in the accademia, Avi is not afraid of making suggestions of what it might be and even saying “if it turns out of being a rock, so be it”.
When we observe a fourth interstellar object, I'll gladly read Avi Loeb's wildest speculations alongside more measured perspectives. This is the third time we're observing an interstellar object?
This doesn't mean everyone is overhyping the comet, it means you're underhyping the mantis shrimp. There are a number of absolutely unimaginable miracles of nature on Earth.
One of my (highly educated and successful) buddies thinks it some sort of alien interstellar probe. I told my 13 year, who keeps up with these kinds of things, and asked what he thinks. He just kind of stared at me and then said "i think it's a comet from outside the solar system." and went back to playing DCS. heh from the mouth of babes..
Clearly your son has not studied its orbital path near 2 major planets.
What in said path would you like to highlight?
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ESA%E2%80%99s_Mars_a...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3I/ATLAS#Trajectory
Someone really aught to add a picture at the bottom of this article with a gif of aliens saying "take me to your leader"...
It goes very close to 2 major planets. What's the chance of that?
It was only detected when 4.5 AUs from the Sun (which, I'll also note, exerts significant graviational force on inbound objects). It was already close; we can't currently detect the tens/hundreds/thousands of similar objects likely whizzing past at further distances as we speak.
If it was 100 AUs at closest approach, we would never have seen it. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud is still theoretical, even)
The chances of yesterday's Powerball numbers being 04 24 49 60 65 01 was about 1:300M.
I don't think you understand what I'm talking about. Look at how close it goes to Mars and Jupiter.
> Look at how close it goes to Mars and Jupiter.
You're doing the thing. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Survivorship-bias.sv...
It's close because we saw it. We saw it because it's close.
We are not on Mars or Jupiter.
We are (via our robot representatives). In fact, they're our closest vantage points to this thing.
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/ESA_s_...
This thing traveled light years to get here. Possibly over billions of years. 30 million kilometers from Mars and 300 million and 3 billion kilometers from Mars would all be close approaches. Any approach can be claimed to be close; that's the magic trick at play here.
Our robot representatives there were not the ones who spotted it, so what relevance is it that they are there?
I don't think you're responding to my claim, which is that the close passes to Mars and Jupiter seem very unlikely. Of all random trajectories through the solar system at the distance of this body, what fraction of them pass equally close to major planets? I'd even be willing to limit it to trajectories close to the ecliptic plane, because we may be scanning that plane more.
I am responding to your claim.
4.5AUs is as close as 0.2AUs from an interstellar standpoint. Both are equally likely, just as every Powerball number is equally likely. Any object of this nature we can spot is going to be quite close with our current detection technology.
Again, your argument is effectively like arguing that 04 24 49 60 65 01 cannot possibly be yesterday's winning Powerball numbers, because it's a 1:300M chance. The game must be rigged!
Now, if the next couple interstellar objects we detect also do a similarly close pass on Jupiter and Mars, there'll be something worth wondering about.
(Similarly, if tomorrow's Powerball numbers are 04 24 49 60 65 02, I'll have questions!)
How cool is it that, as a species, we developed tools to allow us to continue watching an interstellar object zapping the void on the other side of the sun!!!
Seeing how everything is going, though, I strongly feel like we peaked as a species and that, while we'll continue up for a (short) while, the downgrade is just inevitable.
To be clear, we're not looking through the Sun at the object. We're looking past the Sun at the object through a telescope that is positioned to observe the Sun, for the most recent imagery.
I agree with you, but I have been experimenting with image processing using the data available from this satellite (as a hobbyist). Honestly, while it's impressive that we gather data from a piece of technology that's floating in space, the resolution of this is nothing to write home about. If I take anything away from my brief amount of experience with this, it's that we still have a long way to go in terms of the quality of our imaging of our surrounding space.
I haven't fully finished my processing yet and still need to tune the wavelength and account for some drift, but this is basically the state-of-the-art: https://tcdent-pub.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/3i_atlas_10302...
Anybody else feel like there're just ... too many active plotlines?
It is/isn't the Singularity while we are going and not going into WW III, while Rama is maybe zooming by, while Modern Rome does the whole fall of the Republic nonsense, or maybe doesn't! While the H5N1 thing is still churning away reassorting in pigs!
Narrative superposition is exhausting.
Don't forget a bunch of infected rhesus monkeys escaping an overturned truck.
ffs. Seriously?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/us/monkeys-euthanized-mis...
Not infected. Maybe the story updated after you first read it.
One small thing we can all calm down about. =)
Turn off active screen devices and go for a (very long) walk. News are exhausting only if you allow them to be.
I appreciate what you're trying to say here, but this was more an infovore glorying in how weird everything is than someone who has too much screen time (I don't, in fact, even use a screen.)
But also sometimes monitoring the world is useful. I'm very glad I was paying attention in February 2020, for instance!
>(I don't, in fact, even use a screen.)
I don't understand. How did you write this comment?
Click their username.
> I'm a totally blind software developer.
oh my science! it's just like in Ant Man 3 on iMax
Just a heads up that you likely shifted into a parallel universe.. iMax doesn't exist; we have HBO Max
Welcome! I certainly hope this universe is better than your original one
For those unaware, there are a ton of AI generated videos across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook of physicist Brian Cox saying this is an alien spacecraft:
https://www.ign.com/articles/physicist-brian-cox-thanks-yout...
Damn interstellar tourists, just coming here, taking in the sights and leaving. The least they could do is spend some money in the local economy, smh.
slightly off-topic thought experiment that's been on my mind lately:
to us, the sun appears to be the size of, let's say, a quarter held at arm's length. this is at 93M miles (1AU, or ~8 light minutes) distance. if we moved the sun 100 miles away from earth, it would take up the entire sky. now in the other direction, if we doubled the distance, to 2AU, it would appear to us as half its normal size and 1/4 as bright (irradiance follows inverse square law). at 3AU the sun would be 1/9 as bright and 3x smaller than a quarter. at 100AU, we're talking about brightness of 1/100^2 (one ten-thousandth) the sun's apparent brightness. with me so far?
Sirius A: the brightest star we can see; 25x more luminous than the sun; 2x the size of the sun; 8.6 light YEARS distance (544,000AU) from earth.
if we moved the sun to the same distance as Sirius A, it would appear 296 BILLION times dimmer and 544,000 times smaller. yet Sirius A is easily visible - the brightest star in our sky - despite being only 25x more luminous and 2x larger.
do you see the discrepancy? 25x more luminous doesn't compensate for a 296-billion-fold brightness loss. The numbers we are given don't make sense, not even close. (and this is without considering diffusion, which would make the discrepancy even worse.) i'm not proposing an explanation or a modification to the model, i just think the data don't make sense.
I've found that when I have a thought that seems to contradict the "established" model of the world, I tend to just be missing some critical factor. A recent example is when I thought: "why don't we just use physical objects to communicate information? Wouldn't that be instantaneous?" Turns out, no, pushing on one end of an object only communicates information to the other end at the speed of sound. Not intuitive when you only think about observable experience (it sure seems like if I push a steel bar, the other end moves instantly), but that's how the world works.
In the case of your thought experiment, the critical factor is that our eyes are able to observe and adjust to a very wide range of brightness in different conditions. Sirius A really is billions of times dimmer than the sun to our eyes (hard to find a good reference for that, but this mentions it: https://ecampus.matc.edu/mihalj/astronomy/test5/stellar_magn...).
>The numbers we are given don't make sense
These are all numbers you just provided, with no source for them.
But even using your numbers, 300 billion is 3x10^11. The Sun provides about 10^5 lux, while starlight overall provides about 10^-4 lux[1], which is a difference of 10^9, meaning the difference between "all the starlight on a dark night" and "just the starlight from Sirius" would be around 10^2, which... seems about right?
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_%28illumin...
Yeah, people get really messed up by just how good our eyes are. (For a close-to-home example, people think indoor plants get a lot closer to sunlight-level amounts than they really do.)
We can spot a single photon in the right conditions. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12172
Don't worry, Avi Loeb is on it. https://avi-loeb.medium.com/3i-atlas-rapidly-brightens-and-g...
"Does it employ a power source that is hotter than the Sun?"
Sigh.
I don't like to discourage questions like that, because they kill curiosity. We know what the likely answer is, but reasonable assumptions are just that. Assumptions. Why not let mind wander about the exciting ( if somewhat hard to consider as possible ) lines of thinking.
He moved from merely asking questions to promoting an unsupported claim without any real evidence (repeatedly). he's not curious.
Planetary scientist academics are angry because he's getting all of the attention and it isn't even in the field he's most known for previously. Even smart humans are still humans.
There's a difference in asking questions and pushing as fact with no evidence. It swings both ways
Plus he is an authority figure with a captive audience. He has a much higher responsibility than the average person speculating.
Yeah it doesn't instill a lot of confidence in the quality of ivy league credentials when guys like this are running around spouting nonsense. I'm surprised there's not a clause in his employee handbook that says to not be an obvious troll. Kooky science is one thing but this is just the type of person the men with butterfly nets and white coats should be interested
What is Loeb pushing as fact with no evidence? Can you provide a representative quote?
You can easily answer this with a Google search.
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Dr. Avi has a pretty clear point and he goes into details on the JRE released just yesterday. https://youtu.be/EaAun27gftk
What most stand out is the sheer amount of closed mind people in the accademia, Avi is not afraid of making suggestions of what it might be and even saying “if it turns out of being a rock, so be it”.
Just to be clear, "here he is shilling it to Joe Rogan" was intended to support his theory?
> even saying “if it turns out of being a rock, so be it”
I don't doubt it! He'll get another chance the next time we spot another one.
That's a pretty wild, and public, hypothetical for someone with his standing at Harvard.
Why would someone "with his standing at Harvard" be expected to avoid "wild, and public, hypothetical[s]"?
Does everyone at any prestigious institution have some duty to remain conventionally mundane in all their musings?
Is there any reason to think such hypotheticals are, on net, more harmful than helpful?
Isn't tenure (like Loeb's) designed to encourage a fearlessness around topics & speech?
That's his grift these days.
He'll have the same to say about the next one.
When we observe a fourth interstellar object, I'll gladly read Avi Loeb's wildest speculations alongside more measured perspectives. This is the third time we're observing an interstellar object?
Yes, this is the third to be spotted.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1I/%CA%BBOumuamua
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2I/Borisov
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3I/ATLAS
2/3 of them Loeb has made wild claims about.
Wouldn't be especially interesting if it did. Even a mantis shrimp can do that: https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/og0n3b/t...
This doesn't mean everyone is overhyping the comet, it means you're underhyping the mantis shrimp. There are a number of absolutely unimaginable miracles of nature on Earth.
It would be deeply interesting for a comet to have a power source of any kind.
A volcanic comet?
A (hot) volcano on a comet would be very interesting, especially if said volcano was hotter than the sun.
Even with cryovolcanoes, the power source is not on the comet; it's the sun.
Maybe it's a chunk of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przybylski%27s_Star -- which admittedly is pretty darned strange in itself.
[dead]
Maybe it's being driven by Bat Boy?
I miss the days when tabloid fodder stayed in the tabloids.