The veil of mystery shrouding interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS has been pulled back a bit after it was photographed from multiple planets recently. Researchers are now more confident than ever that it is not some inexplicable entity from a distant alien civilization.
And yet, the one guy who has been pushing those alien theories more than anybody, Harvard astronomer Avi Lobe, just won’t let it go.
3I/ATLAS is about to swing through our neighborhood, cruising past Earth in a month at 170 million miles out. Then it’ll keep heading inward for a March meet-up with Jupiter. It’s around here that Loeb is firing up his conspiracy theory engines.
Comet 3I/ATLAS / NASA
Astrophysicist Claims 3I/ATLAS Will Deploy Probes Near Jupiter
He argues that recent non-gravitational acceleration nudged 3I/ATLAS toward an interesting target, one he says is not happening by coincidence: Jupiter’s Hill radius, the area the planet can keep an object in its orbit. Loeb thinks 3I/ATLAS’s trajectory might be deliberate, maybe even part of a mission to seed Jupiter with technology.
NASA scientists would prefer to keep the discussion tethered to reality. Evidence overwhelmingly paints 3I/ATLAS as a regular, if weird, comet made of ice and dust. Loeb isn’t backing down.
He points out that the object’s close pass by the Sun last month gave it an extra push that, conveniently, will swing it within 53 million miles of Jupiter and just 160,000 miles outside the Hill radius. He argues that this course shift looks “finely tuned,” possibly even the work of thrusters.
He wants NASA’s Juno probe to take a good look this spring, just in case Jupiter has acquired any unexpected satellites that didn’t come from Earth.