Play this Music whilst reading. 1. The retrograde trajectory of 3I/ATLAS is aligned to within 5 degrees with the ecliptic plane of the planets around the Sun, with a probability of 0.2% . This suggests that the trajectory may have been planned. 2. The arrival time of 3I/ATLAS was fine-tuned to bring it to 29 and 54 million kilometers from Mars and Jupiter, respectively, and be unobservable from Earth at perihelion . 3. The forecasted perijove distance of 3I/ATLAS during its encounter with Jupiter on March 16, 2026 is 53.6 million kilometers, close to Jupiter’s Hill radius, 53.5 million kilometers . This match includes the non-gravitational acceleration that 3I/ATLAS displayed near perihelion. The rare coincidence might mean that 3I/ATLAS intends to release technological devices at Jupiter’s Lagrange points — where fuel requirements are minimal. 4. Analysis of the Hubble Space Telescope image from July 21, 2025 suggests that the anti-tail before perihelion must have been in the form of a tightly collimated jet that is about ten times longer than it is wide. This is similar to the tight collimation observed in the latest post-perihelion images. It is difficult to understand how the sublimation of pockets of ice as a result of illumination by sunlight would lead to tightly collimated jets out to a million kilometers. No known comet exhibited a physical sunward jet of this length. For a technological object, a beam of particles might be used to mitigate the risk from the solar wind that would otherwise impact its surface at a relative speed of order 500 kilometers per second and release a hundred thousand times more energy per unit mass than explosives. 5. At large distances, the rotation axis of 3I/ATLAS was aligned to within 8 degrees with the sunward direction when it entered the solar system. The probability for that is 0.5%. 6. The observed wobble of the pre-perihelion jet in the direction of the Sun requires the base of the jet to be within 8 degrees from the sun-facing pole, with probability of 0.5%. 7. The existence of a prominent jet towards the Sun on the way of 3I/ATLAS out of the solar system requires a similar coincidence near the opposite pole of the rotation axis. The fact that a tightly collimated jet appears as the sunward anti-tail both before and after perihelion (while reversing direction at perihelion relative to the direction of motion), has a tiny probability of occurring at random, equal to the square of 0.5% or 0.000025. Get Avi Loeb’s stories in your inboxJoin Medium for free to get updates from this writer. 8. The launch base of the post-perihelion anti-tail jet resided on the nightside of 3I/ATLAS before perihelion and the base of the pre-perihelion anti-tail jet is now on the nightside of 3I/ATLAS after perihelion. For these bases to be active only when facing the Sun, they must be well insulated on the nightside for a period longer than several months. However, heat would naturally flow by conduction throughout the body of a natural comet, making this insulation requirement difficult to satisfy. 9. The gravitational deflection of 3I/ATLAS by 16 degrees at perihelion, is exactly twice the opening angle of the anti-tail jet. This coincidence allows the wobbling jet around the rotation axis to generate an anti-tail in the direction of the Sun before perihelion and a counter jet on the opposite pole after perihelion, with a jet opening angle of 8 degrees on both poles. 10. 3I/ATLAS arrived from a direction coincident with the radio “Wow! Signal” to within 9 degrees, with a probability of 0.6% . Composition Anomalies of the Gas Shed by 3I/ATLAS: 11. The gas plume surrounding 3I/ATLAS contains much more nickel than iron, as found in industrially-produced nickel alloys, and a nickel to cyanide ratio that is orders of magnitude larger than for thousands of known comets, including 2I/Borisov. This might indicate a technological origin for these abundances. 12. The gas plume surrounding 3I/ATLAS contains only 4% water by mass, whereas water is a dominant constituent in familiar solar-system comets . The plume might have resulted from the sunlight releasing the ices and dust that accumulated on the surface of a technological object during its journey through cold dense clouds of the interstellar medium. Unusual Physical Properties: 13. The nucleus of 3I/ATLAS is much more massive than 1I/`Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov, while moving faster than both . There might not be enough rocky material in interstellar space to deliver a natural iceberg of this mass once per decade to the inner solar system . This suggests that 3I/ATLAS may have targeted the inner solar system rather than being drawn at random from the reservoir of interstellar icebergs. 14. 3I/ATLAS shows extreme negative polarization, unprecedented for all known comets, including 2I/Borisov . This unusual polarization may be related to its unusual anti-tail. 15. Near perihelion, 3I/ATLAS brightened faster than any known comet and was bluer than the Sun Winter Solstice This moment marks the shortest day and longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, where the Earth reaches its maximum tilt away from the Sun.