Interstellar Visitor 3I/ATLAS - Alien Technology?

Is it just much ado about nothing?

 

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” - Carl Sagan

 

Excitement in the scientific community is running at fever pitch about the latest interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS, most likely a comet, which has unprecedented orbital dynamics, physical properties and chemical composition. It has also given rise to wild speculations endowing it with an alien technology and malign intent aimed at hapless earthlings.

In this guest article, her third one under my banner, Ilavenil T defuses these claims using mainly the tools of Carl Sagan’s famous Baloney Kit.  For her previous two articles, see here and here.  

Ilavenil T

Introduction

This year we have been fortunate enough to witness an interstellar visitor, 3I/ATLAS – only the third known and observed one, although there may have been thousands throughout human existence. The first two – 1I/Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov have opened up new fields of study – the composition of planetary disks around other stars, and the density of rocky bodies traversing interstellar distances. This new visitor is expected to add to our body of knowledge, answering old questions and giving us a few new ones. However, it has also led to several conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific notions. There are too many speculative articles and videos on this comet. Here is an indicative list:

• Did Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Send the Wow! Signal? | WION Podcast – YouTube
• Avi Loeb: ‘It’s a possibility’ 3I/ATLAS comet is alien ship - YouTube
• Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS could be alien technology – Economic Times

This fear mongering is dampening what should be a fascinating experience for both scientists and lay people. In this article, I attempt to break down each of these unwarranted and grossly exaggerated claims.

What we know so far

Let us start with a summary of what is known at the time of writing (October 8^th, 2025):

• 3I/ATLAS was discovered on July 1, 2025, by the ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) survey telescope at Río Hurtado, Chile, and is the third confirmed interstellar object passing through the Solar System after 1I/ʻOumuamua and 2I/Borisov.
• The comet follows a hyperbolic trajectory with an excess velocity of 58 km/s relative to the Sun and an extremely high orbital eccentricity. It will reach perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) on October 29, 2025.
• Images from the minor planet centre database, from https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/
• The nucleus has a diameter between 0.32 and 5.6 km. The comet is described as “unusually rich in carbon dioxide” with small amounts of water ice, water vapour and carbon monoxide. It is emitting cyanide gas and atomic nickel vapor at concentrations similar to Solar System comets.
• The coma spans approximately 26,400 by 24,700 km, and has a mixture of icy and dark material. Initially, there seemed to be a tail facing the Sun, but this was a dust plume. By August 2025, the comet had developed an anti-solar tail roughly 56,000 km long. It might have originated from the thin disk or thick disk of the Milky Way, and could be older than the Solar System.

That is what we have from the scientific community so far, and more is expected every day. Let’s take a moment to appreciate what has been done – science has advanced enough for hundreds of people to work together, to decipher the nature of something that formed before the Sun existed.

That passage gave me goosebumps when I read it through after writing it. Is this not fascinating enough, without exaggeration and fearmongering?

Now, let’s look at the stories being spun.

Digging through the hype

When I started researching, I ran into many videos and articles reiterating the same claims. On further probing, I found that all the videos and articles are based on one paper – a draft published in July 2025 by Abraham Loeb, Adam Hibberd and Adam Crowl: “Is the Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Alien Technology?”

It is formatted as a scientific publication, with tables and diagrams. And who am I to contradict a renowned astrophysicist with a presence at Harvard? All science demands are answers to questions, no matter who asks them.

Avi Loeb in 2023.

A lens to look through

However, I can always stand on the shoulders of giants – those who have genuinely advanced science and influenced human thought. So, I’m going to dissect this paper using the lens of the Baloney Detection Kit proposed by the great Carl Sagan in his book “The Demon-Haunted World”.

Carl Sagan

“Arguments from authority carry little weight – ‘authorities have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.”

The credentials of the authors do not matter. It also follows that my arguments on the unscientific nature of this paper need not apply to their earlier scientific work. 

Dissecting the paper

The paper by Loeb et al has the following structure:

1.     Introduction

2.     A table of findings

3.     The evidence:

a.     The size of the object

b.     The lack of outgassing

c.      The trajectory

d.     Possible strategies and “motivations”

4.     Non-gravitational accelerations

a.     Solar Sails

b.     Possibilities of intercepting planets

5.     Conclusion

The first problem I have is right in the introduction. According to the Baloney Detection Kit:

“Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among ‘multiple working hypotheses’, has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.”

The authors do not propose multiple hypotheses in their paper. Instead, it’s one “testable hypothesis.”

“The recent interstellar visitor to our Solar System, 3I/ATLAS is a technological artifact, and furthermore has active intelligence. If this is the case, then two possibilities follow: first that its intentions are entirely benign and second they are malign.”

That is not a single testable hypothesis. That is a nest of three hypotheses. Is the paper proposing tests for each of those?

I’ve summarized the logic in that paragraph in this flow chart.

The other hypothesis – the obvious one – is left unsaid. It is that 3I/ATLAS is a natural object that has reached us by travelling across a vast distance.

Let me move on to the next section – a table of findings.

Points 2 and 3 have been disproved by later observations:

·      The diameter is now fixed to be less than 5.6 km (Hubble Space Telescope Observations of the Interstellar Interloper 3I/ATLAS)

·    The outgassing has been observed by the Vera Rubin observatory (NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory Observations of Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS (C/2025 N1))

Points 4 to 9 are based on this convoluted logic:

·      The ship is alien

o   The aliens want to attack Earth

§  They are going to “intercept” Jupiter, Mars or Venus in order to send a probe or weapon to Earth.

This is what happens when the authors become attached to a hypothesis.  They have simply accepted it as true, and have built on their assumptions.

From the Baloney Detection Kit:

Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way-station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.

In “The Demon-Haunted World,” Sagan says that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The only point that stands out as extraordinary in that table: The trajectory of 3I/ATLAS.

But it is extraordinary only when compared to the other objects in the Solar System, which formed along with the Sun, sharing the same orbital characteristics. What happens when we look at interstellar objects?

Here are the three interstellar objects that we have observed so far, and their characteristics compiled from Wikipedia.

Property	1I/ʻOumuamua	2I/Borisov	3I/ATLAS
Observation arc	80 days	657 days (1.80 years)	104 days
Orbit type	Hyperbolic (interstellar)	Hyperbolic (interstellar)	Hyperbolic (interstellar)
Perihelion (AU)	0.25592 ± 0.00001	2.00652 ± 0.00001	1.3564 ± 0.0001
Semi-major axis (AU)	-1.2723 ± 0.0001	-0.8515	-0.26392 ± 0.00002
Eccentricity	1.20113 ± 0.00002	3.3565	6.1396 ± 0.0008
Inclination (°)	122.74	44.053	175.11 ± 0.00008 (retrograde, inclined 5°)
Longitude ascending node	24.597	308.15	322.16 ± 0.001
Argument of perihelion	241.811	209.12	128.01 ± 0.001
Time of perihelion	9 Sep 2017 @ 87.71 km/s	8 Dec 2019 13:33 UT	29 Oct 2025 11:44 ± 00:01 UT
Max. orbital speed (km/s)	26.33 ± 0.01 (mean), 87.71 at perihelion	43.9 @ perihelion	68.3 @ perihelion
Physical dimensions	115 m × 111 m × 19 m; 230 m × 35 m × 35 m	≤ 0.4–0.5 km	Nucleus: 0.32 to 5.6 km; CO₂ coma ≈ 700,000 km

Do you see any pattern other than the hyperbolic orbits? Neither do I. The reason is the small number of interstellar objects that we have observed so far.

Again, here’s what the Baloney Detection Kit has to say:

“Statistics of small numbers - a close relative of observational selection (e.g., ‘they say 1 out of 5 people is Chinese. How is this possible? I know hundreds of people, and none of them is Chinese. Yours truly.’ Or: I’ve thrown three sevens in a row. Tonight, I can’t lose.’).”

The case here is a lot smaller than the examples given. We have a grand sample size of 3! Also interesting, this isn’t the first time Loeb has said that an interstellar object is technological.

Loeb had indicated the shape and velocity of Oumuamua as reasons for it being alien technology in 2019, but uses the size and orbital parameters of 3I/ATLAS to reach essentially the same conclusions. How could he reach the same conclusion about two totally different objects using two different characteristics? Interestingly enough, the authors themselves point to the small sample size later in the paper.

“At the heart of this, is a question any self-respecting scientist will have had to address at some point in their career:” Is an outlier of a sample a consequence of expected random fluctuation, or is there ultimately a sound reason for its observed discrepancy?” A sensible answer to this hinges largely on the size of the sample in question, and it should be noted that for interstellar objects we have a sample size of only 3, therefore rendering an attempt to draw inferences from what is observed rather problematic.”

With this point, I agree wholeheartedly.

After this point, there are eight figures and two tables, but all of them illustrate the same points outlined in the first table – that the orbit of 3I/ATLAS carries it close to the orbits of the planets. This is a classic case of treating speculation as evidence. The idea that 3I/ATLAS possesses “active intelligence” is stated as if it were a serious possibility, not the fringe speculation it is. Scientific hypotheses must be rooted in observable evidence. Here, no such evidence exists—only assumptions piled on assumptions.

Human behaviours and motivations projected onto aliens

The other problem I see throughout the paper is anthropocentrism – treating science from a human perspective. This is always problematic, but more so in this case where the authors have decided to deduce the motivations of an alien intelligence (for which no evidence exists.)

The calculations, graphs and interpretations are based on the limitations and possibilities of human technology in 2025; not 50 years back or 50 years in the future. 

• There are numerous references to an Oberth parking orbit
• There are calculations made by assuming that the object is powered by a solar sail.
• The reason for the orbit is given as being hard to reach from Earth, particularly – only by a SpaceX spaceship refuelled at Low-Earth Orbit.

In essence, they have constrained the intelligence and knowledge of aliens to what humans are capable of.

These assumptions remind me of an observation. Why do Gods have human qualities? Because if you ask a fish to create a god, all it will create is a bigger fish.

Why would they assume that a civilization that has mastered interstellar travel would operate with our limitations? This is an example of what Sagan calls the Human Conceit in another book – “The Pale Blue Dot,” – a view that humans are somehow a privileged species.

The leap to hostile intent

Perhaps the most troubling part of the paper is its leap from orbital mechanics to alien psychology. The authors propose that 3I/ATLAS might be hostile, that it could release probes or weapons. This premise, built on a flimsy foundation, also invokes the “Dark Forest” trope – that aliens have not made contact because they will mostly be hostile. This makes for an interesting thought experiment in science fiction, but invoking it as a scientific framework stretches credibility to breaking point.

The infuriating conclusion

The conclusion begins with “We strongly emphasize that this paper is largely a pedagogical exercise, with interesting discoveries and strange serendipities, worthy of a record in the scientific literature. By far the most likely outcome will be that 3I/ATLAS is a completely natural interstellar object, probably a comet, and the authors await the astronomical data to support this likely origin.”

However, the authors follow with a paragraph starting with “Nevertheless” and reiterating their hypotheses again.

This negates everything they said earlier. The word ‘nevertheless’ in this context is an example of a weasel word, also defined in the Baloney Detection Kit. However, Theodore Roosevelt’s definition is more appropriate for the way weasel words are used in this paper.  “Just as a weasel sucks the meat out of an egg, a weasel word sucks the meaning out of all the words around it.”

Phrases like “could be”, “somewhat likely” etc. can be easily spotted in media related to pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, no matter the medium used. It is a way for authors to escape responsibility.

There are many such weasel words in this paper, tabulated below.  

Phrase	Count	Examples from paper
"could be/could have"	7	"could be technological", "could quite easily release probes"
"would be/would allow/would enable"	21	"would allow it to conduct", "would be more likely"
"should be/should clarify"	8	"should be much lower", "should clarify the situation"
"might intend/might choose/might prove"	3	"might intend to slow down", "might prove futile"
"possibly/possibility"	4	"possibly hostile", "the possibility that 3I/ATLAS"
"likely to be/most likely"	4	"likely to consist of", "most likely outcome"
"appears to be/ostensibly appears"	2	"as extremely strange as that ostensibly appears"
"largely a pedagogical exercise"	2	Used to distance authors from their own hypothesis
"if”	3	Hypothetical framing throughout
"various"	4	"various anomalous characteristics"
"somewhat ambiguous"	1	"somewhat ambiguous"
"we surmise"	1	Speculation presented as inference

 

A total of 60 instances of weasel words – it is easy to check for yourself.  I have not simply added the number of times the words appear, only where the authors have used them to distance themselves from the ideas presented.

Compare this to the paper on the Hubble Space Telescope Observations of 3I/ATLAS, my reference for the diameter – there are coulds, woulds, ifs or should, but they clearly refer to experimental evidence, scientific literature or predictions based on extrapolation of data. This is the standard for scientific writing and publications, including the one you are reading now.

Reactions to the new evidence

Loeb has continued to give interviews and publish articles on social media, rehashing the same points. In an article published on October 3, 2025 in medium, he has listed a number of anomalies in comet 3I/ATLAS.

·   He has not accepted that he was wrong about the size and lack of outgassing being evidence of the object being an alien ship. Instead, the article simply says that the diameter is still very large compared to the other interstellar objects. 

·     He has not commented on the presence of outgassing, but is now talking about the high nickel to iron content.

·      After the release of the draft in July, there was a time when Loeb was saying that the tail being forward-facing is evidence that its technological. Now that a tail pointing away from the Sun has been discovered, he has not taken back his statement. He merely states that the tail is weak.

·    He again reiterates his observation that the “WOW” signal and 3I/ATLAS are from the same direction. The WOW signal is just one anomalous signal out of tens of billions examined under the SETI initiative, including thousands by both me and my host blogger. The signal being in the same direction is of no consequence.

·   He ends his list of anomalies with this statement: Dogmatists who insist that 3I/ATLAS is a comet of natural origin must be held accountable to explain all of these anomalies as results of probable natural processes. 

The scientists who are waiting for every tiny bit of data about 3I/ATLAS in order to learn more about the universe are already being held accountable by the scientific method, something Loeb does not seem to think applies to him. This again, as per the Baloney Detection Kit, is an “Ad Hominem attack” (attacking the person instead of his or views,) combined with a “straw man argument” – caricaturing scientists as clinging to their beliefs.

His views are accompanied by a picture of – not 3I/ATLAS or a generic comet, but of a statue of the Trojan horse, which is what Loeb concludes that 3I/ATLAS is.

Let us go back to the Baloney Detection Kit and apply “Occam’s Razor” – when two hypotheses are equally possible, use the simpler one rather than the more complicated one. In this case, we have evidence that comet 3I/ATLAS is interstellar and nothing to suggest that it is technological, so let’s keep it simple – it’s a natural object.

This article is one of many voices against Loeb's views. Astrophysicist Steve Desch, at Arizona State University, has commented that "[Loeb's claims are] polluting good science—conflating the good science we do with this ridiculous sensationalism and sucking all the oxygen out of the room", and said several of his colleagues are consequently refusing to engage with Loeb in the peer review process.

By saying this, I am not saying that extraterrestrial life or intelligence is impossible. On the contrary, I believe that finding extraterrestrial intelligence should be a primary goal for humankind. However, it is important to look for actual evidence, not use our creativity to spin stories without reason.

Let us act with wisdom

Writing this article was very difficult, not because of technical details but because the same paper is being rehashed and republished every day, and more people are reacting to it. It has also fuelled other claims of alien megaships and conspiracies. I hope I have proven the unscientific nature of the original paper clearly. I have linked all my references and the readers are free to do their own research.

Every time I come across conspiracies like this, the first words that cross my mind are not just of Sagan, but also of Tiruvalluvar – especially these two couplets from the Tirukkural.

Epporul yāryārvaaik kētpiṇum apporuḷ
meypporuḷ kāṇpa daṟivu. (Kural 423)

 

And

Epporul ettaṉmait tāyiṉum apporuḷ

meypporuḷ kāṇpa daṟivu. (Kural 356)

 

“Wisdom is seeking the truth in anything you hear, no matter what it is”

“Wisdom is seeking the truth in anything you hear, no matter who says it”

 

I hope all of us can act with wisdom.

 

References

1.       "3I/ATLAS." Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3I/ATLAS. Accessed 8 Oct. 2025.

2.       "Small-Body Database Lookup." Jet Propulsion Laboratory, ssd.jpl.nasa.gov. Accessed 8 Oct. 2025.

3.       "Unusually Rich in Carbon Dioxide." arXiv, 2025, arxiv.org/pdf/2508.18209.

4.       Wright, Jason T., et al. "Could Be Older than the Solar System." The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2025, iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/adfbf4.

5.       Loeb, Abraham, Adam Hibberd, and Adam Crowl. "Is the Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Alien Technology?" arXiv, July 2025, arxiv.org/abs/2507.12213. Accessed 8 Oct. 2025.

6.       "Avi Loeb." Harvard University Department of Astronomy, astronomy.fas.harvard.edu/people/avi-loeb. Accessed 8 Oct. 2025.

7.       Haeffel, Gregory J. "The Baloney Detection Kit: Carl Sagan's Rules for Bullshit-Busting and Critical Thinking." University of Notre Dame, www3.nd.edu/~ghaeffel/Baloney.pdf. Accessed 8 Oct. 2025.

8.       Sagan, Carl. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Random House, 1995.

9.       The Demon-Haunted World. Goodreads, www.goodreads.com/book/show/17349.The_Demon_Haunted_World. Accessed 8 Oct. 2025.

10.   Kelley, Michael S. P., et al. "Hubble Space Telescope Observations of the Interstellar Interloper 3I/ATLAS." The Astrophysical Journal Letters, vol. 973, no. 2, 2025, iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/adf8d8/pdf.

11.   Lisse, Carey M., et al. "NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory Observations of Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS (C/2025 N1)." arXiv, 2025, arxiv.org/pdf/2507.13409.

12.   Loeb, Abraham. "A Recap of the Anomalies of 3I/ATLAS on the Day of Its Closest Approach to Mars." Medium, 3 Oct. 2025, avi-loeb.medium.com/a-recap-of-the-anomalies-of-3i-atlas-on-the-day-of-its-closest-approach-to-mars-6c2949fb16ab. Accessed 8 Oct. 2025.

13.   Tiruvalluvar. Tirukkural of Tiruvalluvar (in Roman Transliteration) With English Translation. Translated by V. R. Ramachandra Dikshitar, Internet Archive, archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.506984. Accessed 8 Oct. 2025.