Below is a set of questions from the journalist Ivan Petričević along with my answers:
1. Professor Loeb, you have written extensively here about the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS, and you have pointed out several anomalies that distinguish it from ordinary comets or asteroids. Now that the object has reemerged from behind the Sun, new observations reveal a complex structure of jets that appear unusually intricate for a typical comet. Could you explain what makes 3I/ATLAS so scientifically interesting at this stage? What are the specific features, whether in its brightness, orbit, or fragmentation, that continue to raise questions about its true nature? And, considering the potential importance of this object, why do you think NASA has not yet released what could be the clearest image or detailed observational data available?
The series of collimated jets in post-perihelion images of 3I/ATLAS extend out to a million kilometers towards the Sun and 3 million kilometers away from the Sun. They could be generated by sunlight heating pockets of ice on the surface of a natural object for about a month or by thrusters on the surface of a spacecraft. In the first case, the jet speed should be at most a few hundred meters per second whereas in the second case, it should be at least a few kilometers per second. Spectroscopic measurements of molecular or atomic lines can easily distinguish between these scenarios by measuring the Doppler velocity of these jets in the coming weeks. Science is fun because it allows us to choose the correct interpretation based on the humility to learn from evidence rather than from the arrogance of expertise.
My assessment is that NASA did not release as of yet the HiRISE images of 3I/ATLAS when it arrives within 29 million kilometers from Mars on October 3, 2025, because of bureaucratic reasons during the U.S. Government shutdown over the past 42 days. It is interesting to note that the HiRISE website here releases many new images of Mars on a daily basis but singles out 3I/ATLAS by stating: “Any images of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS are considered NASA-wide news. Because the federal government is in shutdown, communications of NASA news have been suspended.” An interesting question is why was 3I/ATLAS singled out. It should have been straightforward to share data through a suitable repository with the scientific community. Science should not be held hostage by bureaucracy.
2. Your ideas often challenge mainstream interpretations and invite lively debate within the scientific community. In the case of 3I/ATLAS, how do you respond to critics who argue that every anomaly must have a natural explanation, and that invoking an artificial origin should be the very last resort? Where should science draw the line between cautious skepticism and open-minded exploration?
These critics are trained on data sets of past knowledge, just like AI systems. They are used to analyzing asteroids or comets and will insist that everything entering the solar system must be asteroids or comets. This simply underscores their limited vocabulary. My advance to them is simple: please add to your training data set all the technological objects that humanity launched to space. Once you do that, you would not confuse the Tesla Roadster car for a near-Earth asteroid, as the Minor Planet Center did on January 2, 2025.
3. Given that 1I/‘Oumuamua, 2I/Borisov, and now 3I/ATLAS are three interstellar objects we have detected in just a few years, how many others do you think are currently crossing our Solar System unnoticed? Are we only beginning to uncover a much larger population of interstellar visitors, and how might upcoming instruments such as the Vera Rubin Observatory transform our understanding of what is moving through our cosmic neighborhood?
The NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory started surveying the southern sky with a 3.2 gigapixel camera and is expected to discover several dozens of new interstellar objects in the coming decade. We must check if all of them are icy rocks or maybe some are “tennis balls thrown by a cosmic neighbor.” We need to invest in constructing a twin telescope to the Rubin Observatory that covers the northern sky.
But even state-of-the-art telescope like these are missing objects that are moving too fast (at more than hundreds of kilometers per second) or small objects (less than 100 meters, the size of a football field) within the Earth-Sun separation. We launched only smaller payloads in the past and our survey telescopes cannot detect them unless they pass close to Earth.
4. One of the reasons your work resonates so strongly with the public is your ability to communicate science clearly and imaginatively. Yet we have seen that new ideas often face harsh backlash online, even among people who claim to support science. How do you personally balance the need to share bold hypotheses with the responsibility to avoid premature conclusions?
I do not regard myself any different than a typical member of the general public. I do regard myself as fortunate to get paid for maintaining my childhood curiosity. I do not subscribe to social media and do not care about how many likes I get from my colleagues. This, combined with their jealousy for the public attention that my common-sense gets from the media and the public, must make some of my colleagues furious. I leave this problem to their therapists.
It is common practice in science to lay out conjectures and test them by experimental data, like the work of a detective that searches for clues in order to resolve a mystery. This is what I do with respect to 3I/ATLAS and what I did routinely in the thousand scientific papers that I published in other fields, like cosmology or black hole research, where this approach was encouraged and appreciated. For some reason, the community which studies icy rocks appears to be very conservative. I prefer not to engage in mud wrestling because it gets everyone dirty.
5. I think that you often emphasize that progress in science requires curiosity, courage, and willingness to challenge convention. Do you feel that today’s academic and institutional climate still allows for that kind of intellectual freedom? Or is modern science becoming too cautious and too dependent on consensus and funding structures that discourage risk-taking?
The biggest damage of personal attacks against me is that they discourage fledgling scientists from thinking outside the box. They notice the scrutiny I get and do not think creatively to secure their job prospects in academia. My critics want to keep the herd in a tight configuration because they lack imagination. Unfortunately, this reduces our chances of discovering new knowledge.
6. Your expedition to retrieve fragments of the interstellar meteor known as IM1 was a groundbreaking moment, since it may represent the first physical material from beyond our Solar System ever recovered on Earth. What do you believe these findings could reveal about the composition of interstellar objects and their possible connection to technology or life beyond our planet? And in a broader sense, how does such a discovery influence the way we see humanity’s place in the universe?
We have published half a dozen papers on the findings from the expedition in peer-reviewed journal. We identified a new material with a chemical composition that was never identified in the solar system before. A Netflix documentary about the expedition is scheduled to appear in 2026, where everyone can enjoy our scientific process of discovery. I still have a scar on my leg from an injury on the deck of the expedition ship “Silver Star”.
7. Finally, Professor, would you ever consider visiting other countries to speak about science and inspire our young people? Various countries have enormous curiosity but very limited scientific outreach, especially in astronomy and space exploration. What message would you give to students and aspiring scientists here who look up to your work and want to pursue the same kind of fearless curiosity?
I would love to visit your country and others. We are all in the same boat and we share a common destiny. My hope is that a technological visitor from interstellar space will convince us to change our priorities and invest trillions of dollars a year in space exploration rather than conflicts around the globe.
My message to students and aspiring scientists is: “stay true to your childhood curiosity and never pretend to be the adult in the room. Life is a learning experience.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
Source link
