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Gizmodo
6 days ago
- Science
- Gizmodo
Interstellar Visitor Zipping Through Our Solar System Could Be a Hostile Probe, Alien-Hyping Scientists Warn
There's a visitor in town, and its name is 3I/ATLAS. The presumed interstellar comet presents a rare opportunity for astronomers to study an object born a long time ago in a star system far, far away. But a new paper uploaded to the preprint arXiv server asks an intriguing question: Is the object actually alien technology? For Harvard astronomer and study co-author Abraham Loeb, this is not his first interstellar rodeo. In 2018, Loeb proposed that the interstellar object 'Oumuamua might be an alien probe. He's now back at it, along with co-authors Adam Hibberd and Adam Crowl from the UK's Initiative for Interstellar Studies, asking the same question about 3I/ATLAS. The team is essentially flagging 3I/ATLAS as a candidate for alien technology and, perhaps alarmingly, as something that might actually pose an existential threat to humanity. Sounds absolutely bonkers, but it's a topic worth exploring and not something to reflexively toss onto the garbage heap. From the moment it entered our view, 3I/ATLAS—the third interstellar object ever detected in our solar system—instantly became the biggest news in astronomy for the month, if not the year. Astronomers are using the rare opportunity to study the object in as much detail as possible using the best instruments available. A clear picture of the object is emerging, suggesting it's very likely an enormous, icy comet that's considerably older than our solar system; preliminary estimates suggest it's 0.74 miles long (1.2 kilometers) and dates back some 7 billion years. An Interstellar Comet Is Here, and Its Age Is Mind-Bending The interstellar interloper is zipping through our solar system at ludicrous speeds, clocking in at 37 miles (60 kilometers) per second. Its velocity is so extreme that it'll exit our solar system and disappear from our view later this year, escaping the gravitational influence of our Sun. Astronomers are therefore under a tight deadline to understand everything they possibly can about 3I/ATLAS—an object that originated in some faraway protoplanetary or planetary system. That said, astronomers have already made some great strides in sketching out the finer details of 3I/ATLAS, quickly churning out papers pertaining to the visitor's age, size, velocity, spin, and, most importantly, its origin, based on observational data. According to research released earlier this week, the object is a jumble of organic molecules, silicates, and carbon-based minerals, placing it in a similar compositional category as asteroids found between Mars and Jupiter. Based on current data—much of it from researchers working with the newly launched Vera C. Rubin Observatory—3I/ATLAS is expected to pass through the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter later this fall, reaching its closest point to the Sun in late October. Excitingly, the Sun's warmth should sublimate enough ice on the comet to brighten the coma and tail even further. Suffice it to say, astronomers' ongoing investigations into 3I/ATLAS largely confirm that it's a cometary castaway. Like other comets we've seen before, 3I/ATLAS likely emerged from natural processes and was banished to interstellar space by some gravitational interaction, such as a close encounter with a gigantic planet or a passing star. Importantly, and despite strange, unfounded claims made in the new Loeb paper, there's zero indication that 3I/ATLAS is anything but a natural object formed by natural processes. Yet that hasn't stopped Loeb and his colleagues from venturing beyond the existing evidence. What's more, they've violated Occam's razor—a central tenet of the scientific method. Scientists are told that the simplest explanation is often the best when tackling puzzling phenomena. In this case, the simplest explanation, given the existing evidence, is that 3I/ATLAS is a comet. Often, when astronomers detect something unusual or inexplicable in space, there's the urge to invoke extraterrestrial influence. The Many, Many Times Astronomers Mistook Mundane Phenomena for Aliens This seems to be the case here, but as we'll discuss next, these researchers are not wrong to be asking these sorts of questions. As Sara Webb, an astrophysicist at the Swinburne University of Technology, wrote in The Conversation, 'Objects like 3I/ATLAS remind us that space is vast, strange, and full of surprises. Most of them have natural explanations. But the strangest objects are worth a second look.' Loeb and his colleagues do bring up a salient point—that we need to be curious about this object and not simply assume that it is what we think it is. Moreover, the team's warning that this object, should it be an alien probe, poses a potential hostile threat to humanity is rooted in some fascinating—if not disturbing—philosophical arguments having to do with our failed search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. The first is the Fermi Paradox—the surprising observation that, despite our galaxy's immense size and extreme age, we have yet to see any signs of intelligent aliens. As Italian physicist Enrico Fermi famously asked in 1950, 'Where is everybody?' This conundrum, known as the Great Silence, is not so easy to brush aside, as virtually all proposed solutions fail to convincingly account for the conspicuous absence of a Milky Way filled with extraterrestrials and extraterrestrial technology. This has led a number of philosophers, astrobiologists, and science-fiction writers to propose some rather grim solutions to the Fermi Paradox, that is, solutions that point to a galaxy devoid of space-faring civilizations. Loeb's new paper invokes one of these solutions, an idea known as the Dark Forest hypothesis. The term is borrowed from sci-fi author Liu Cixin, who made note of this possibility in his The Three-Body Problem trilogy, specifically the 2008 novel The Dark Forest. In Liu's imagined universe, intelligent civilizations stay silent and hidden because any interaction with aliens could be fatal; since it's impossible to know another civilization's intentions, the safest move is to eliminate potential threats before they can act. Hence, a Dark Forest galaxy, in which advanced civilizations take the form of silent hunters. This general concept didn't start with Liu; sci-fi novelist and SETI expert David Brin has been ruminating over the possibility of killer alien probes since 1983. As Loeb and his colleagues argue in the new paper, 3I/ATLAS, should it be artificial, is likely to possess 'active intelligence.' If that's the case, the object might be friendly, evil, or possibly something in between, they write. If it's benign, we can relax, but it's the second possibility—that it's malign—that's cause for 'most concern.' That's because the Dark Forest resolution to the Fermi Paradox is the more likely scenario, 'as it would neatly explain the singular lack of success of the SETI initiative to-date,' according to the paper. In other words, the reason we have yet to encounter aliens is that they're stealthy hunters, and this interstellar visitor, should it be a probe, likely belongs to that class of civilizations. Which is obviously not good for us. This argument brings the Berserker probe concept to mind, an idea proposed by another science fiction writer, Fred Saberhagen. The concept is as simple as it is disturbing: the solution to the Fermi Paradox is that all intelligent life is wiped out by self-replicating machines—known as Von Neumann probes—that methodically sterilize the galaxy of intelligence. All this talk of interstellar probes may seem outlandish, but there are a few things worth considering. First, our galaxy, across its 13-billion-year history, has likely spawned numerous advanced civilizations, many of which were (or are) capable of launching probes on interstellar missions. Secondly, we ourselves have already launched three interstellar (or interstellar-bound) probes as a result of exploring our immediate environment: both Voyager probes and New Horizons. It's therefore not unreasonable to assume that interstellar probes of varying ages and technologies are zipping around the Milky Way. One day, we just might spot one of these alien artifacts passing through our neck of the celestial woods. Let's hope it's friendly.
Yahoo
18-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Harvard Paper Explores Possibility That Object Approaching From Beyond Solar System Is Hostile Alien Technology
A strange interstellar object is hurtling its way toward our pale blue dot — and according to a Harvard astronomer, there's a chance it's not a benign asteroid or comet, but instead some harmful form of alien tech. In a new, yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper, Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb — the same scientist who suggested that 'Oumuamua, the first interstellar object ever detected back in 2017, was alien in nature — teamed up with researchers from the Britain-based Initiative for Interstellar Studies to hypothesize not only that the newly-discovered interloper 3I/ATLAS is alien in origin, but that it may be from a hostile civilization, too. Loeb is an interesting character: he's an enormously accomplished academic and the former chair of Harvard's prestigious astronomy department, but in recent years has often made headlines for suggesting that various detections in the cosmos might be alien spacecraft. In other words, he was almost bound to weigh in on this latest interstellar visitor, which is only the third ever detected. And weigh in he did. Citing the so-called "dark forest" hypothesis — which comes from sci-fi writer Cixin Liu's novel of the same name and posits that the universe is full of silent and aggressive aliens, all staying as quiet as possible to avoid mutually-assured destruction — Loeb and his colleagues Adam Hibberd and Adam Crowl suggest that 3I/ATLAS could theoretically provide evidence that we are not alone, and that our neighbors would do us harm. "The consequences, should the [dark forest] hypothesis turn out to be correct, could potentially be dire for humanity," Loeb wrote in a blog post accompanying the paper, "and would possibly require defensive measures to be undertaken (though these might prove futile.)" In another recent post, Loeb argued that 3I/ATLAS' strange characteristics — including that it's likely over a dozen miles in diameter, which is far larger than the obelisk-sized 'Oumuamua — render it statistically improbable. "If 3I/ATLAS is not an asteroid — based on the interstellar reservoir argument in my paper, nor a comet — based on the lack of the spectral fingerprints of carbon-based molecules around it, then what is it?" Loeb mused in that previous post. It's worth noting that these sorts of hypotheses have made Loeb controversial among skeptical colleagues who consider his quest for alien artifacts to be sensationalist in nature. In his latest paper, to be fair, Loeb acknowledged that there's a good chance 3I/ATLAS is not from an extraterrestrial civilization. "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," the scientific trio wrote. Still, Loeb argues that undertaking a "pedagogical exercise" like the one presented in the new paper is important not just to stretch open minds, but also to create protocols for determining the natures of future interstellar objects. "When viewed from an open-minded and unprejudiced perspective," the researchers concluded, "our paper includes many compelling insights that could be applied to tens of interstellar objects that are expected to be detected over the next decade." More on space objects: Remember That Asteroid NASA Deflected in a Test of Saving Earth? We Have Bad News Solve the daily Crossword
