https://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2025/11/09/loebs-3i-atlas-anomalies-explained/

“Avi Loeb continues to claim that 3I/ATLAS has many anomalous behaviors that lead to the conclusion that it “might” be an alien spacecraft.  He carefully hedges the probability that it is a spacecraft around 40%, which gives him plausible deniability of the bad-faith “just asking questions” variety while still making the comet sound weird enough that lots of people are thinking (or worried!) that it’s an alien spacecraft. It certainly gets him lots of TV time and fan mail.

Here are why these anomalies are not indications that it is an alien spacecraft.”

My doctor asked me about Atlas at my recent checkup and I assured them that any talk about aliens was massively overblown.

Great critique. I hadn't known about his "9° from the Wow signal" claim, but that alone should unmask him and show the tinfoil. Invoking an instrument glitch from the seventies is almost desperate in its crackpottery.

I liked the planetary science adage: “Comets are like cats: they have tails, and they do precisely what they want." And as Wright repeatedly stresses, comets are weird - also like cats.

I do wonder why the awkward units, as when determining the comet's acceleration. "the actual precision is more like 10-7 AU/day2..." I would think km/day² wouid serve, BHWDIK.

This guy seems to be either going nuts or to have decided to become an entertainer rather than a serious scientist. Is it the lure of the bright lights of the TV studio and the fun he can have as a public enfant terrible, in the mould of Tegmark/Shapiro or Yuval Noah Harari? Or does he really believe in 50 billion ton spacecraft that give off a mixture of gases in the form of a cometary tail? Perhaps the truth is more mundane: he set off asserting it could be alien technology and now finds it too embarrassing to withdraw.

Edited November 11Nov 11 by exchemist

I switch off when I see his name now,

21 hours ago, exchemist said:

This guy seems to be either going nuts or to have decided to become an entertainer rather than a serious scientist. Is it the lure of the bright lights of the TV studio and the fun he can have as a public enfant terrible, in the mould of Tegmark/Shapiro or Yuval Noah Harari? Or does he really believe in 50 billion ton spacecraft that give off a mixture of gases in the form of a cometary tail? Perhaps the truth is more mundane: he set off asserting it could be alien technology and now finds it too embarrassing to withdraw.

Oumuamua, his little balls Atlas and others. I think Netflix is the next smart move.

"Spherules."

1 hour ago, pinball1970 said:

I switch off when I see his name now,

Oumuamua, his little balls Atlas and others. I think Netflix is the next smart move.

"Spherules."

Yes, seems to be a load of spherules indeed. 😆

It seems to me some of these guys get seduced by media interest to their detriment of their science (Brian Cox and De Arse Tyson spring to mind). Tegmark/Shapiro, of "mathematical universe" fame, or notoriety, depending on your point of view, is another Cambridge, Mass man (MIT) who seems to have decided to go the showmanship route and milk his enfant terrible status. But he's a lot less nutty than Full Frontal Loeb.

They’ve found water in the tail, via RF absorption signals of OH

“During sublimation, each frozen water molecule (H2O) on the comet’s surface splits into a hydroxyl radical (OH) and a hydrogen atom (H). Thus, hydroxyl radicals are a product—and therefore an indicator—of cometary sublimation.

If 3I/ATLAS were a metal spacecraft, telescopes wouldn’t detect these molecules.”

https://gizmodo.com/radio-signal-crushes-alien-theory-about-interstellar-comet-3i-atlas-2000684262

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

It seems to me some of these guys get seduced by media interest to their detriment of their science (Brian Cox and De Arse Tyson spring to mind).

Michio Kaku’s on that list.

I think Sean Carroll has the right balance between media exposure and science communication.

21 minutes ago, swansont said:

Michio Kaku’s on that list.

Defo

2 hours ago, swansont said:

“During sublimation, each frozen water molecule (H2O) on the comet’s surface splits into a hydroxyl radical (OH) and a hydrogen atom (H). Thus, hydroxyl radicals are a product—and therefore an indicator—of cometary sublimation.

If 3I/ATLAS were a metal spacecraft, telescopes wouldn’t detect these molecules.”

IIRC Loeb has atacked Gizmodo as a front for the hydroxyl radical Left. They have a propaganda broadcast, which you can find at 1.665 and 1.667 GHz.

2 hours ago, pinball1970 said:

think Sean Carroll has the right balance between media exposure and science communication.

Derek Muller is also good, with an emphasis on fixing popular misconceptions about science, as well as explaining the difficult concepts. One of the few YouTube channels I will click on, or recommend, is his Veritasium channel. Haven't checked to see if he's done anything on Loeb's claims, but I expect he will.

@swansont I am glad you bought this subject up, I was wondering whether to start a thread myself about it, merely due to curiosity.

My curiosity is this, 3 inter stella objects have now visited our realm in the universe & I wonder if these objects are a sign of some sort of traumatic collision/destruction that happened quite some time ago, somewhere far away & the 'debris' from that is now coming our way.

I wonder if there will be more of these objects coming & if indeed there already have been but science hasn't been able to see them before recent times.

What do you folks think or have possible evidence of?

Edited November 15Nov 15 by Imagine Everything

37 minutes ago, Imagine Everything said:

@swansont I am glad you bought this subject up, I was wondering whether to start a thread myself about it, merely due to curiosity.

My curiosity is this, 3 inter stella objects have now visited our realm in the universe & I wonder if these objects are a sign of some sort of traumatic collision/destruction that happened quite some time ago, somewhere far away & the 'debris' from that is now coming our way.

I wonder if there will be more of these objects coming & if indeed there already have been but science hasn't been able to see them before recent times.

What do you folks think or have possible evidence of?

My guess is they have always come at intervals but only recently have our sensors become good enough firstly to spot them and secondly to determine that they come from outside the solar system. However maybe someone with more knowledge will comment.

1 hour ago, Imagine Everything said:

@swansont I am glad you bought this subject up, I was wondering whether to start a thread myself about it, merely due to curiosity.

My curiosity is this, 3 inter stella objects have now visited our realm in the universe & I wonder if these objects are a sign of some sort of traumatic collision/destruction that happened quite some time ago, somewhere far away & the 'debris' from that is now coming our way.

I wonder if there will be more of these objects coming & if indeed there already have been but science hasn't been able to see them before recent times.

What do you folks think or have possible evidence of?

I have no idea of the answer to this or even if anyone can answer it.

However I think it is a really well thought out question, worthy of a good answer so well done. +1

1 hour ago, Imagine Everything said:

My curiosity is this, 3 inter stella objects have now visited our realm in the universe & I wonder if these objects are a sign of some sort of traumatic collision/destruction that happened quite some time ago, somewhere far away & the 'debris' from that is now coming our way.

Is there any evidence these came from the same direction? I have not seen any, nor is it obvious that we could precisely determine the origin direction, since they could have been deflected along the way. But from what I can find, Atlas came from a distinctly different direction than the first two

https://www.sciencealert.com/astronomers-have-traced-our-new-interstellar-comets-origin-and-its-a-first

“The finding makes it extremely unlikely that all three known interstellar visitors to date came from the same place. Indeed, 3I/ATLAS appears to be the first known interstellar interloper that came to the Solar System from the thick disk of the Milky Way.”

47 minutes ago, swansont said:

Is there any evidence these came from the same direction? I have not seen any, nor is it obvious that we could precisely determine the origin direction, since they could have been deflected along the way. But from what I can find, Atlas came from a distinctly different direction than the first two

I don't know about that tbh.

I must confess I didn't even think about different directions. I guess I assumed as 3 had been mentioned in what seemed to me like quick succession that they originated from the same place.

I didn't consider deflection either. I should have on both counts. -1 for me.

3 hours ago, Imagine Everything said:

My curiosity is this, 3 inter stella objects have now visited our realm in the universe & I wonder if these objects are a sign of some sort of traumatic collision/destruction that happened quite some time ago, somewhere far away & the 'debris' from that is now coming our way.

It is not so much 'things coming our way', rather the fact that our solar system is travelling around the galaxy.

"The Sun moves in a roughly circular path around the center of the Milky Way galaxy, a journey that takes about 225 million years. This primary orbital motion is accompanied by a perpendicular "bobbing" motion as the Solar System oscillates up and down through the galactic plane, with a period of approximately 63 million years. The speed of this motion is roughly 230 kilometers per second (about 828,000 km/hr.)"

So it is entirely possible that we are overtaking interstellar objects moving slower than we are, being overtaken by faster moving objects, and intercepting objects as we weave 'up and down' the galactic plane.
Relativity makes it appear we are being 'visited', where we may, in fact, be doing the 'visiting'.

Same or similar to the perseid cluster then, is that right?

If I remember what I read a while back about how when the earth moved through it in ancient times & meteors from that region bombarded the earth.

But only because we move through it.

The earth orbiting through the cluster as opposed to the cluster coming to us.

It'd be very cool if we could grab a piece or two off the visitors & find out more.

42 minutes ago, Imagine Everything said:

Same or similar to the perseid cluster then, is that right?

If I remember what I read a while back about how when the earth moved through it in ancient times & meteors from that region bombarded the earth.

But only because we move through it.

The earth orbiting through the cluster as opposed to the cluster coming to us.

It'd be very cool if we could grab a piece or two off the visitors & find out more.

I said others knew more about this than I do.

+1 to @MigL