What would really happen if we made contact with alien life? How would our lives change… what would happen to the stock market?
The “Something Offbeat” podcast explains all that and more with Dr. Avi Loeb, who joined the show to discuss the 3I/ATLAS comet, currently making its way through our solar system, it’s upcoming blind date with Mars and the potential impact of discovering alien life. Loeb says there are some interesting things about the comet that indicate it might be intelligently directed.
“First, it’s trajectory is aligned with the orbital plane of the planet, implying a possible intelligent fine tuning,” he explained. “Second, its implied size is 20-46 kilometers based on the latest data from the SPHEREx space observatory, unless most of the reflected sunlight comes from a dense dust cloud around it. This dust would have been pushed behind the object by solar radiation pressure, but was not seen there in the highest resolution image obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope.”
This comet was first observed this summer and it continues to make headlines. Loeb, who is the founder of the Galileo Project at Harvard University, continues to publish updates here on Medium. Just this week, he explored the comet’s “anti-tail” as well as a newly discovered anomaly about its polarization and about how its glow is turning green.
Loeb previously told the “Something Offbeat” team about some of the other 3I/ATLAS anomalies, including its size – potentially around a million times bigger than the previous interstellar (from outside the solar system) comet 2I/Borisov.
“I noted in my first paper on 3I/ATLAS, the amount of rocky material per unit volume in interstellar space is smaller by a factor of ten thousand than the value needed to deliver into the inner Solar system one giant rock of this size over the decade-long survey conducted by the ATLAS telescope,” Loeb said.
There’s also the nickel plume gas around the comet, based on data from the Very Large Telescope. Typically, nickel shows up with iron, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here.
“Nickel without iron is a signature of industrial production of nickel alloys. This data constitutes a new anomaly of 3I/ATLAS,” Loeb said. “Natural comets generically show iron and nickel simultaneously, as both elements are produced together in the ejecta of supernova explosions.”
That’s not where the chemical anomalies end. Loeb noted that “the gas plume around 3I/ATLAS is dominated by mass with 95% of CO2 and only 5% of H2O, very different from an expected water-rich comet.”
Loeb also explained the “blind date” we’re heading towards with 3I/ATLAS.
“Blind dates are exciting because they hold the potential for surprises, especially when dealing with an interstellar date partner of unknown origin,” he said. “On Oct. 3, 2025, the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS will pass within a distance of 29 million kilometers from Mars. At that time, the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will be able to image 3I/ATLAS with a resolution of 30 kilometers per pixel. The resulting closeup image might separate the contributions of the nucleus and surrounding dust cloud to the total luminosity of reflected sunlight stemming from 3I/ATLAS.”
This week, news came out about Mars itself and the possibility that life once bloomed on the planet. Scientists reported Wednesday that NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance uncovered rocks in a dry river channel that may hold potential signs of ancient microscopic life.
According to Loeb, “the Minimum Orbit Intersection Distance (MOID) of 3I/ATLAS from Mars, namely the closest distance that 3I/ATLAS gets to the complete path of Mars around the Sun, is merely 2.7 million kilometers,” and that “by itself constitutes a remarkable fine-tuning of the path of 3I/ATLAS.”
As we get closer to the blind date on Oct. 3, Loeb says there are even more reasons to use the HiRISE camera to get an understanding of what’s going on around Mars.
“In addition to imaging the nucleus and dust cloud of 3I/ATLAS, HiRISE could image Mars in search for any precursor objects that precede 3I/ATLAS and get closer to Mars than the main object, he said. “Near-Earth telescopes cannot detect the reflection of sunlight from precursor objects that are smaller than a hundred meters, the upper limit on the size of all space probes launched by humans so far.”
Listen here to learn more about what we might expect from the comet, about the new Loeb Scale and more.
Each week, “Something Offbeat” takes a deeper look at unusual headlines. If you have suggestions for stories the podcast should cover, send them to us at somethingoffbeat@audacy.com.