The strange behaviour of 3I/Atlas since it was first recorded entering the inner Solar System by the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Río Hurtado, Chile, on July 1, 2025 sets it apart from the previous two interstellar objects spotted in our skies over the past decade. Its hyperbolic trajectory coinciding with the path of the planets, its scheduled rendezvous with three of them, its curious front-pointing anti-tail, its strange composition, and the unique polarization of light within its coma, all tell us we are dealing with an object not yet entirely understood by science.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures interstellar comet 3I/Atlas with unprecedented detail. Source: Space.com
While to some 3I/Atlas is simply a weird-acting exocomet of unusual composition, others, such as Dr Avi Loeb of Harvard University, propose that we should consider the possibility that it is an example of alien technology. Indeed, the various anomalies identified in connection with 3I/Atlas place it at four on Avi’s newly rolled-out Loeb Scale where zero is a natural comet and ten is an unquestionable alien spacecraft of potential danger to life on Earth (with 1I/’Oumuamua, the first interstellar visitor from 2017 being at four on the Loeb Scale, and 2I/Borisov, the second interstellar from 2019, being at zero on the scale). As of October 2025, Loeb estimates a 30-40% chance that 3I/Atlas may not be entirely natural, based on eight anomalies.
