Despite widespread consensus that interstellar object 3I/ATLAS is simply a massive comet composed of ice and carbon dioxide, Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb remains unconvinced. Since its discovery in early July, Loeb has speculated that this celestial traveler — only the third interstellar object ever observed passing through our solar system — could be something far more extraordinary: a piece of alien technology. He points to its highly unusual path, which recently brought it close to Mars, its immense estimated mass of 33 billion tons, and its strange “anti-tail” that appears to point toward the Sun instead of away from it. These anomalies, combined with its odd chemical composition, have fueled Loeb’s suspicion that 3I/ATLAS may not be entirely natural. In a post on his blog, he even assigned a 30–40% likelihood that the object’s origin could be artificial, likening it to a “Trojan Horse” concealing advanced technology under the guise of a comet.

Upcoming observations from the European Space Agency’s Juice mission and NASA’s Juno spacecraft could soon provide new answers, as both will pass near the object in the coming months. These encounters will allow scientists to study how 3I/ATLAS interacts with solar radiation and to determine whether its behavior truly fits that of a natural comet. Recent images captured by NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover and the ESA’s Mars orbiters have already offered rare glimpses of the object as it streaked past the Red Planet. Yet, Loeb warns that if 3I/ATLAS does prove to be an artificial visitor, Earth is dangerously unprepared. “There are no established protocols for responding to functioning alien devices near Earth,” he wrote, cautioning that such an event would demand an immediate response rather than distant observation. “A visitor in our backyard,” Loeb noted, “requires immediate attention—because it could enter through the front door.”

SOURCE: Futurism