In a universe as vast as ours, the arrival of a stranger from the dark usually invites wonder; yet for some, it triggers a deep-seated instinct for survival. When the object known as 3I/ATLAS was first detected on July 1, 2025 by the ATLAS survey telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, it was quickly categorised as the third interstellar visitor to grace our solar system.
Traveling at a record-breaking 137,000 miles per hour — the highest velocity ever recorded for such a visitor — the object was found to be on a hyperbolic trajectory, confirming it would never return. While most of the scientific community reached for their telescopes to study a rare comet, others began to ask a more unsettling question. What if this visitor isn't a wanderer, but a scout?
The argument has gone beyond the edges of conspiracy forums on the internet and into the halls of top universities. Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb is at the front of the movement for a more 'open-minded' approach.
Loeb has written a number of papers and blog posts in which he says that we can't just put 3I/ATLAS in the 'natural' folder without carefully looking at it. Loeb pointed out a number of 'anomalous' features, such as the presence of nickel without iron, which is a sign of industrial alloys, and a strange anti-tail jet that points directly at the sun.
He says that even though the chances of an artificial origin are low, the stakes are too high to ignore. If there is even a small chance that the object is a technological probe with bad intentions linked to the 'Dark Forest' theory of cosmic survival, not getting ready could mean the end of humanity.
A Galactic Coincidence or a Calculated Path for 3I/ATLAS?
One of the primary reasons for this scientific friction is the object's peculiar trajectory. AKM Eahsanul Haque, a scientist with the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and a lecturer at Universiti Teknologi Petronas, recently published a paper on Earth ArXiv addressing these anomalies. 'Loeb et al. found that the retrograde orbital plane of 3I/ATLAS is quite near to the ecliptic, with a 0.2% likelihood that this alignment is not just a coincidence,' Haque noted.
This alignment with the ecliptic — the plane where most of our planets reside — is unusual for a random visitor. Loeb argued this path offered a 'clandestine' advantage, allowing an intelligent probe to use the sun's shadow as cover while performing a 'Solar Oberth Manoeuvre' to brake and stay bound to our system. However, Haque explains that the galactic disk, where the majority of stars are located, sits nearly in line with this plane.
Therefore, it is 'plausible that ISOs [interstellar objects] that are thrown out of other systems may naturally follow paths that are similar to these'. Essentially, while the path is rare, it might just be the result of galactic geometry rather than alien navigation. Haque also pointed to a lack of non-gravitational acceleration, a key feature that would be expected if the object were using artificial propulsion.
Why NASA Remains Unmoved by 3I/ATLAS
Despite the intrigue, the institutional heavyweights remain firmly grounded in the natural world. For NASA, 3I/ATLAS is a comet until proven otherwise. Following a comprehensive briefing after the 2025 government shutdown, NASA confirmed that 20 different missions across the solar system had monitored the object, concluding it was a geological relic possibly up to 11 billion years old.
Tom Statler, NASA's lead scientist for Solar System Small Bodies, has been vocal about the object's conventional characteristics. In an interview with The Guardian, Statler was dismissive of the more sensational theories. 'It looks like a comet. It does comet things. It very, very strongly resembles, in just about every way, the comets that we know,' he stated.
To settle the matter, the University of California, Berkeley, recently used the Green Bank Telescope as part of the Breakthrough Listen project to scan 3I/ATLAS for 'technosignatures'. Lead researcher Benjamin Jacobson-Bell confirmed that after filtering through 471,000 candidate signals, they found no evidence of transmitters down to 0.1 watts — ten times weaker than a standard mobile phone signal.
Statler acknowledges that the object has some 'interesting properties' that differ slightly from the comets born in our own backyard, such as a higher-than-usual carbon dioxide to water ratio, but maintains that its behaviour is consistently natural. It is, in his view, a prehistoric relic of a distant star system that simply happens to be passing through.
The tension lies in our limited sample size. With only 'Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov as prior benchmarks, we are still learning what a 'normal' interstellar visitor looks like. As 3I/ATLAS continues its trek — having reached its closest point to Earth on Dec. 19, 2025 at 167 million miles — every major instrument on the planet is tracking its every move. Whether it is a harmless pile of ancient ice or a 'Black Swan' event hidden in plain sight, the world's experts are no longer looking away.
