NASA ignores Harvard’s study on an alleged extraterrestrial ship: “It is an interstellar kite”

On July 1, 2025 he will go down in history as the day that astronomers confirmed the presence of an interstellar third object In the Solar System. 3i/Atlas is, according to NASA, a kite from another star. But for Harvard Avi Loeb teacher, it could be something much more disturbing: a piece of extraterrestrial technology, possibly hostile.

Wait, what? In a series of articles and a Paper scientist Not yet reviewed by pairs, Avi Loeb and its collaborators pose a hypothesis that touches science fiction. Known for his controversial position on ‘oumuamua, The first interstellar object ever discoveredwhich also described as possible alien technology, Loeb bases his new theory on a series of characteristics that he considers “anomalous” on the path and nature of 3i/Atlas.

The anomalies of 3i/Atlas. Loeb Point out in your blog that the retrograde path of 3i/Atlas is inclined only about five degrees with respect to the plane in which the earth orbit. The director of the Harvard Astronomy Department estimates that the probability that this occurs by chance is only 0.2%. His career about Venus, Mars and Jupiter unusually. An orbit like this, it argues, would be ideal for a probe that would like to observe the planets of the interior solar system.

On the other hand, Loeb highlights its huge size, initially estimated at 20 kilometers in diameter. According to his article, we should have seen a million objects of the size of ‘oumuamua (about 100 meters) for each object of the 3I/Atlas caliber. To top it off, the new interstellar visitor will reach its closest point to the sun (its perihelium) on October 29, 2025, at which time it will have been hidden from our view by the sun itself.

The dark forest hypothesis. Loeb suggests that becoming invisible from our point of view is intentionally, since the perihelium is the optimal point to perform an inverse Oberth maneuver: a high efficiency braking to be gravitationally trapped by the solar system without being detected from the earth.

To round his hypothesis, Loeb is part of this idea in the dark forest hypothesis, popularized by the author of “The problem of the three bodies”, Cixin Liu. The hypothesis, One of the explanations of the Fermi paradoxsuggests that advanced civilizations remain silent to avoid being detected by other potentially predatory civilizations. In this scenario, 3i/Atlas would be a recognition probe exploring the solar system.

NASA does not believe it is an alien ship. Although Loeb’s arguments are intriguing, they face Ockham’s Navaja, who says that the simplest explanation is usually correct. In this case, the simplest explanation is that 3i/Atlas is a kite, As NASA says. And the astronomical community has more and more evidence to support this conclusion, refuting, point by point, alleged anomalies.

Telescope images such as North Gemini or the Vera C. Rubin Observatory They show what a coma looks like, A diffuse gas and dust cloud surrounding the kite ice cream When heated by the sun. This should invalidate the argument of the size of 20 km, since the real core is much smaller. Loeb himself He later recognized That the elongated appearance is due to the movement of the object during the photographic exposure, not to its shape.

Disassembling the Avi Loeb hypothesis. Loeb said that no specific gases were detected. However, as explained by astronomer Darryl Seligman, the object was still far from the sun when those statements were made. It is normal for comime activity (basically, sublimation of ice) is weak to those distances. It is expected that as he approaches the sun, The spectral firms of gases They become visible.

Loeb’s hypothesis has been received with strong skepticism. Chris Lentott, Astronomo of Oxford, described the suggestion In Live Science as “a nonsense about stilts and an insult to the exciting work that is being done to understand this object.” This reaction is not by closure, but because the overwhelming evidence available points in another direction.

The reality is that 3i/Atlas is a fascinating object, a piece of another solar system that visits us very far, and that has probably more years than the Sun. Studying its composition and trajectory will give us very valuable information about how the planets are formed in other places of the galaxy.

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Image | Gemini Observatory/Noirlab/NSF/Aura/K. Meech (Ifa/U. Hawaii); Processing: Jen Miller, Mahdi Zamani (NSF/Noirlab)