All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. - Arthur Schopenhauer

Few scientific fields illustrate the above quote better than Astronomy. Take the Big Bang, for example, which was a term initially coined to mock the idea that the Universe was not static and had a beginning in the form of a Singularity. Since the theory had been suggested by a scientist who was also Catholic priest (Georges Lemaître) it was perceived among certain materialist scientists as a way to validate a universal creator. Only after considerable evidence was gathered, in the form of the observable red-shifting of stars, and the detection of cosmic background radiation, was the Big Bang established as scientific fact.

The acceptance of the Big Bang happened before most of those reading these lines were even born (greetings to our senior Grailers out there!). An astronomical revolution that happened well within my lifetime was the first confined discovery of an exoplanet. The existence of planets orbiting other solar systems was regarded as a given by astronomers for centuries, despite the fact a reliable method to detect them hadn’t been conceived of yet (an article of dogma, if you will). It was only until 1995 that the first official exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star was found—earning its discoverers a Nobel prize in 2019.

Currently there are thousands of exoplanets catalogued in the astronomical records. The same process occurred with pulsars and black holes, which were first conceived as theoretical concepts until the first ones were detected, followed by a cascade of discoveries. Which goes to show that in Science, what once was a desert of data can soon be filled with a plethora of new information.

But what happens when cosmic objects are detected not thousands of light years away, but in our own backyard?

On October 19th, 2017, the first officially recognized interstellar object traversing our solar system was detected. Astronomers could ascertain the extrasolar nature of this new object due to its highly hyperbolical trajectory, proving that it did not follow a traditional elliptical orbit circling our mother star like all the planets and tinier objects surrounding it. Designated as 1I/2017/U1 (‘I’ for ‘Interstellar’) it became globally known by the name given to it in honor of the Hawaiian observatory responsible for its discovery—Oumuamua (‘First Distant Messenger’).

Less than two years later on August 29th, 2019, the second interstellar object—2I Borisov—was discovered. Unlike Oumuamua, which was an asteroid, Borisov was a comet with a tail 14 times the size of Earth once it made its closest approach to the Sun.

And in July 1st of this year, the third official interstellar object was detected by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), which is an early warning system continually scanning the skies in search of space objects which could turn into a potential threat to our planet. Hence why it received the name 3I Atlas.

Further observations from other telescopes around the world—including the brand-new Vera C. Rubin observatory in Chile (which is not even fully operational yet) and the Hubble telescope—confirmed Atlas as another visitor from deep space. The general consensus is that Atlas—like Borisov—is a comet displaying a coma, a nebulous bubble surrounding its core composed of ice particles and dust, which emits most of its brightness. Unlike Borisov, however, Atlas seems to have a very incipient, almost non-existent tail; although its size should increase once it gets closer to the Sun.

The general dimensions of Atlas’s nucleus are also a matter of speculation, with the Hubble images giving an estimate of around 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) in size, although it could actually be much smaller than that—perhaps as little as 1,000 feet (320 meters) which is like a grain of sand in the cosmological scale.

But not everyone agrees that Atlas is just a rogue comet. Raising his voice in dissent is Avi Loeb, the same Harvard astronomer who became a world-wide sensation when he proposed that Oumuamua might not have been an interstellar asteroid either, but an actual extraterrestrial craft —perhaps sent by an advanced civilization long extinct—on a mission to explore our solar system.

Avi Loeb

In a series of scientific papers and Medium articles for the general public, Loeb continues to refute his peers, who for instance claim to have managed to detect water emissions in the spectrographic analysis of Atlas. Loeb thinks Atlas’s actual size is 20 kilometers, and if it is a rocky interstellar interloper, then it would represent an statistical fluke since current estimates dictate rocks of that size could only be delivered by interstellar space once every 10,000 years; Loeb then feels it is too much of a coincidence the ATLAS surveillance system just managed to detect it after just 10 years of being operational, in 2015.

Atlas’s trajectory also gives Loeb reasons to speculate it is an artificial object, since it will serendipitously bring it close to Jupiter, Mars and Venus before exiting the solar system (a statistical probability of 0.0005% according to him). If an alien civilization had sent Atlas and carefully crafted its trajectory (in Loeb’s vision of the universe, all the ET objects we would ever hope to find near us would be AI mechanical devices) then it would be able to deploy small probes as it passes near these inner solar system planets—something our telescopes will not be able to detect, because Atlas will make its closest approximation by the time Earth is on the opposite side of the Sun.

So, if it is not comet—because it doesn’t have a big enough tail— then what about the comet-like observed coma? This is where Loeb goes into high-gear speculation, in assuming that a highly advanced alien civilization would be able to design a ‘shield system’ of emitted particles ahead of the vessel, sophisticated enough to protect a craft as it went through our asteroid belt, and cloak its artificial nature from any outside scrutiny.

A buffer zone of large particles would show up in images of 3I/ATLAS as a glow of reflected sunlight ahead of the interstellar object. The glow will not be accompanied by any gas particles, as they would be pushed back by the Solar wind and hence be useless for the purpose of flagging dangerous rocks ahead of 3I/ATLAS. - Avi Loeb, On the Uncertain Nature of Atlas

Needless to say, Loeb’s ideas have been received with a lot of criticism among his peers, labeling them as ‘pseudoscience’. Over the years Loeb has successfully made use of his rising fame as a means to spread his opinion to the public, using channels many of his colleagues would probably find objectionable—such as appearing on the Joe Rogan podcast, or even agreeing to participate in a pseudo-official Congress hearing, in which he plead the investment of one billion dollars in the scientific research of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) like the kind he and his team with the Galileo project are currently conducting.

In fact, Loeb seems to be willing to use his celebrity clout in order to sway political decision-making—among people like Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla), who is also heavily involved in the controversial campaigns to bring legitimacy to the testimony of alleged ‘UFO whistleblowers’—in favor of his plan to recommission the Juno space probe currently orbiting Jupiter, in order to intercept Atlas as it makes its approach to the gas giant.

Juno was launched by NASA in 2011, and arrived to Jupiter in 2016 to conduct a scientific investigation of the planet. Although it officially wrapped its original mission in 2021, NASA decided to keep the probe ‘alive’ until September of 2025, when it will be scheduled to burn out into Jupiter’s massive atmosphere. Loeb’s proposal is to fire up Juno’s dormant engines (assuming they still have enough fuel left) by September 14, so it can attain enough velocity to come close to Atlas—even though it would never be able to match its speed—and study it with its array of instruments.

Loeb’s plan seems like a win-win situation, because it is repurposing an old spacecraft which already served its designed purpose and is scheduled for self-termination anyway. So why aren’t other scientists supporting him, even though they may disagree on his conclusions regarding Atlas’s nature?

On a recent interview in the popular YouTube channel Event Horizon with John Michael Godier, NASA astronomer Darryl Seligman (who was among the first scientists to publish a peer-reviewed paper on Atlas) discussed the history of its discovery and how much we could learn from it, given the fact it is believed to be a very old comet due to its low metallic composition, which would harken back to the days with primordial supernovae before new stars started to create heavier chemical compounds.

Even though the name of Avi Loeb was not mentioned once in this interview—a curious happening, since he’s been a guest on that show on multiple occasions—and after Seligman acknowledged Atlas’s curious trajectory en route to Mars, he mentioned some of his colleagues had just submitted a paper describing an alternative plan to meet-up with Atlas, using one of the multiple probes currently orbiting the Red Planet.

Personally, even though I sympathize with Loeb’s attempts to promote radical thinking in Astronomy, as a layman I perceive his arguments to be rather weak. First, he’s claiming a massive size for Atlas his colleagues disagree on, and using it to base his arguments on the statistical improbability that our initial attempts to search for dangerous rogue objects, would happen to coincide with the discovery of an interstellar object as big as 3I Atlas. Someone like the late Stanton Friedman, who was always taken to task by skeptics about the improbability of extraterrestrial visitation given the immensity of the Universe, would reply that just because something is improbable does not mean it’s impossible—sometimes you get lucky, y’all…

Secondly, his interpretation of the ‘shielding technology’ of his purported alien mothership falls into the same Star Trek-like anthropomorphizing bias he applies to his assumption that the reason Atlas is coming so close to Jupiter, Mars and Venus, is because it is planning to deploy small probes as it passes through—because that’s what smart beings like him would do, obviously.

This silly quarrel reminds me of the time when in the 1990s the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in charge of the Mars Global Surveyor mission acquiesced to the pleas of UFO enthusiasts led by Richard Hoagland, who wanted the probe to photograph the Cydonia region where the controversial ‘Face on Mars’ is located. The results were highly underwhelming to say the least, and it even sparked accusations of an official cover-up attempting to conceal the artificial nature of the Martian landmark.

A Martian sculpture or not, the Cydonia face *is* an interesting feature in the planet’s landscape that *was* worth a second—and even a third or fourth—look. Similarly, it doesn’t matter if 3I Atlas is an ET spacecraft or just a rogue comet. The fact that it comes from outside the solar system is a reason enough to study it with all the means at our disposal; and if that implies creative repurposing of old spacecraft orbiting either Mars or Jupiter, then right now Loeb and his fellow scientists should worry more about ironing out the logistics first, and leaving the academic debate for later.

Right now, we’ve got a visitor to meet.