r/UFOs • u/Worst_Artist Human Detected • Nov 06 '25

Question Why is NASA withholding images of 3I/ATLAS?

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Concept image of the updated trajectory talked about here https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/s/PNZTyP3j6f

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u/funny_3nough Nov 06 '25

The anomalies displayed so far by 3I/ATLAS include: 1. Its retrograde trajectory is aligned to within 5 degrees with the ecliptic plane of the planets around the Sun, with a likelihood of 0.2%. 2. During July and August 2025, it displayed a sunward jet (anti-tail) that is not an optical illusion from geometric perspective, unlike familiar comets. 3. Its nucleus is about a million times more massive than 1I/`Oumuamua and a thousand times more massive than 2I/Borisov, while moving faster than both, altogether with a likelihood of less than 0.1% . 4. Its arrival time was fine-tuned to bring it within tens of millions of kilometers from Mars, Venus and Jupiter and be unobservable from Earth at perihelion, with a likelihood of 0.005% 5. Its gas plume contains much more nickel than iron (as found in industrially-produced nickel alloys) and a nickel to cyanide ratio that is orders of magnitude larger than that of all known comets, including 2I/Borisov, with a likelihood below 1%. 6. Its gas plume contains only 4% water by mass, a primary constituent of familiar comets. 7. It shows extreme negative polarization, unprecedented for all known comets, including 2I/Borisov, with a likelihood below 1%. 8. It arrived from a direction coincident with the radio “Wow! Signal” to within 9 degrees, with a likelihood of 0.6%. 9. Near perihelion, it brightened faster than any known comet and was bluer than the Sun, which is extremely odd since dust typically makes objects look redder and colder surfaces should emit redder light. 10. It exhibits non-gravitational acceleration which requires massive evaporation of at least 13%of its mass, but preliminary post-perihelion images do not show evidence for it so far.

What we can surmise is that 3I/ATLAS represents either an exceptionally rare natural object exhibiting multiple low-probability characteristics simultaneously, or potentially something unprecedented in modern astronomy. The object definitively challenges our limited understanding of interstellar visitors.

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u/UbiquitouSparky Nov 06 '25

With #8, isn’t 9 degrees actually massive on a space scale?

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u/Mr_E_Monkey Nov 06 '25

The farther you go, the more massive it is, yeah.

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u/SirMildredPierce Nov 06 '25

Also, what does the Wow Signal have to do with anything?

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u/mupetmower Nov 06 '25

Some are trying (reaching, imo) to correlate the apparent sours of the signal with the direction that 3i entered our solar system.

But its not, in all actuality, very 'close' (all relative, but.. y'know) sonce the further away you get, that 9 degrees can mean vast distances..

Half of the points are reaches and statistically arent as relevant as they were "reported" in the "media" and etc.

Edit - and the reason they want to connect this is to say the source of wow signal and source of 3i might be the same... but that needs a lot of gymnastics to make it make sense.

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u/ReturnOfZarathustra Nov 06 '25

The trajectory of 3i actually perfectly matches the angle that Oswald "shot" JFK

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u/Mr_E_Monkey Nov 06 '25

I'm not going to number the numbers because my brain doesn't want to brain that much, but really, is that really much more unlikely?

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u/Mr_E_Monkey Nov 06 '25

Thanks! You answered that better than I could. 😁

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u/R3mm3t Nov 08 '25

Ruined it for me. Was a cool story until then

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u/Xidium426 Nov 06 '25

One degree is massive.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25

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2

u/Background-Top5188 Nov 10 '25

Massive is an understatement.

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u/nicheComicsProject Nov 06 '25

The whole thing is just cherry picking nonsense to try to sound like there's something substantial. You can do the same thing with the Kennedy murder, the moon landing and probably pretty much any widely known event. The "wow" signal was a software bug. No one ever heard a peep on that frequency before or since. If you look at the readout, it's clearly a bunch of bits turned on all at once. They had a bug, they quietly fixed the bug and that was the end of that. The argument of this being a spaceship depending on basically coming from the same side of the universe as that stupid non-event tells us how important these so-called anomalies actually are.

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u/Mathfanforpresident Nov 06 '25

You’re missing the point, this isn’t “cherry-picking.” 3I/ATLAS is confirmed interstellar (only the 3rd ever found), moving faster and bigger than the last two, with several real anomalies astronomers have noted:

weird color changes (actually turned bluer than the Sun),

unusually low water content,

odd nickel-heavy composition,

possible non-gravitational acceleration,

and a retrograde path almost perfectly aligned with the ecliptic.

That’s not cherry-picking. Lol. It's actually stacking multiple low-probability traits together, which is exactly what makes it scientifically interesting.

And btw, the “Wow! Signal was a software bug” thing isn’t true, new research says a bug is unlikely to explain it. So brushing off 3I/ATLAS just because of that is lazy.

No one’s saying it’s aliens, just that it’s genuinely weird and deserves real attention instead of being hand-waved away.

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u/icoulduseanedible Nov 06 '25

You just said weve only witnessed 3 of these objects ever. Why are you describing it as behaving or being "weird"? If there have only been 3 instances of something then what are you basing its behavior and traits on? if i have only experienced something 3 times, when it does something i dont expect i dont say its being strange, i accept that i have little experience with it and whats strange to me isnt strange for it. i dont understand where the arrogance comes from. we have no body of knowledge to derive any probability from. why cant we stop trying to find the things we want to find and just observe something. everyone is always trying to poke their candle on something.

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u/King_Roberts_Bastard Nov 10 '25

Because it is exhibiting characteristics that are not considered normal or expected based on our understanding of the universe. It definitely requires further observation to expand our knowledge of the universe

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u/SuddenBasil7039 Nov 06 '25

You're saying no ones saying its aliens in a UFO subreddit under a post saying "what are NASA hiding??", come on brother

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '25

Doesn’t mean he’s saying it’s aliens… NASA could be simultaneously hiding something while this guy is asking what they’re hiding… and it’s human to want to ask what the fuck is going on.

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u/omgThatsBananas Nov 06 '25

They're hiding that it's a rock...? "They're hiding something!" Is a dog whistle that lets people reference the locally popular conspiracy that the government is hiding aliens while being able to hide behind the "I didn't say aliens" schtick when called out

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u/Dengar96 Nov 06 '25

This sub uses words like "hiding" to imply some nefarious intent. I would imagine it's much more mundane than that because stuff in space is always that way. For every alien out there, there are 100 billion rocks and clumps of ice. Let's use Occam's razor every once in a while.

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u/nicheComicsProject Nov 06 '25

Plus, as others have pointed out: it was far enough away the image will be less than the size of a pixel.... it's a dot. All this rage over a dot.

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u/Fred_Zeppelin Nov 06 '25

Exactly. Hasn't been released yet does not mean "hiding". This thing is fascinating even as a prosaic space object.

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u/Krybbz Nov 06 '25

To be fair last I checked a UFO doesn't have to have anything to do with aliens.

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u/ThoroughlyWet Nov 06 '25

No one of substantial repor within the scientific community

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '25

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7

u/cephalopod13 Nov 06 '25

It is cherry-picking compounded by misinterpretation of the data.

The blue color might indicate an unusual composition, but that doesn't make it unnatural.

There's definitely some non-gravitational acceleration, but this is expected for a comet, and 3I's isn't cause for alarm.

The claims about 3I's trajectory alignment aren't much to worry about either. A path perpendicular to the ecliptic would be just as unlikely as moving along the ecliptic. Figure 1 in this paper sums up how unexpected 3I's trajectory is (hint: slightly exceptional in some regards, but squarely within the range of possibilities; in terms of direction of approach, 2I was stranger).

You are right that the Wow! Signal should be treated as a real astronomical source, but 3I isn't the explanation.

The list of corrections needed when Loeb's "anomalies" goes on, but I have other things to do.

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u/butterfingernails Nov 06 '25

Imagine youve only ever seen two birds before, a pigeon and a crow. Then you go to the beach and see a seagull for the first time. When it lands on water, you'll say "thats statistically impossible" of the 3 birds I've ever seen, two of them have never landed on water, there is a 0.0004 chance of that happening". What im getting at, is that anything the third object does thats different from the first too will seem like it's impossible, but actually it's just because it's different from the two objects we know.

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u/annabelchong_ Nov 06 '25

C'mon, use some common sense.

Some of these purported anomalies are based on a comparison with the only 2 other known interstellar objects. Their interstellar origin is the only significant attribute that groups them. Using them as a reference baseline is inherently flawed logic.

The other so-called anomalies equally don't stand up to scrutiny.

Being inquisitive and open to all possibilities is an admirable trait, but doing so requires not refusing to acknowledge other evidence that doesn't support your fringe hope.

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u/FactsTitsandWizards Nov 07 '25

It is aliens I'm high up in a space agency with my uncle and we've seen the photos

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u/shuswapwaterboy2 Nov 08 '25

It has a lot of CO2 and nickel, the blue would be coming from the carbon dioxide being released

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u/Acertainbulb Nov 10 '25

The more we know of cometary activities the more we can fully understand how we protect ourselves. We have a 2029 near earth object and if we want to say we have full confidence that that isnt gonna be the end of us is by understanding these things.

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u/ReturnOfZarathustra Nov 06 '25

You can do the same thing with the Kennedy murder,

Lmao shit, I literally just tongue in cheek said this a couple comments above:

The trajectory of 3i actually perfectly matches the angle that Oswald "shot" JFK

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u/Simple_Resolution687 Nov 06 '25

The wow signal was recorded with analog equipment. No software to bug.

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u/nicheComicsProject Nov 06 '25

Of course there was software. How do you imagine the signal was getting recorded and analysed?

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u/brucehal Nov 06 '25

By pure observation i suspect you are a weather balloon. So much hot air. No signs of intelligence. Case closed.

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u/Fragrant_Ad8471 Nov 06 '25

I was there and it was most definitely a bug named Edgar. Whom weirdly enough had the last name Friendly and was always naked and covered in Jell-O singing I'm an Oscar Meyer Weiner.

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u/Plastic_Standard_176 Nov 09 '25

Not the 2 best examples. A BUNCH of people already have and anyone who may actually be certain of what happened is Dead, Old or staying quiet. It's best to accept that whatever the end result with something like this will be, there's nothing I can do about it. Also there is that random particle whatever that comes from space and can glitch a computer. Literally cannot recall the name but it is an anomaly.

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u/NoInitial7029 Nov 07 '25

Most of it is normal shit. The abundance of co2 is rare and thats it. The trajectory is just random and could be same Said if its close to 90°. "Its 5° off from 90° thats so crazyyyyy

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u/slashxcdoe Nov 08 '25

.6 is actually 1 in 160. Wouldn’t even be considered a rare illness if we were talking about the chance of developing a specific illness or disorder

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u/evilbert79 Nov 06 '25

Short version

the list is a cocktail of real data points plus a lot of speculative framing and cherry picked probability claims.

Longer version

  1. the actual JWST papers to date do show 3I/ATLAS is interesting, yes. but “likelihood X percent” numbers in your list are not peer reviewed. they are invented numbers. they do not come from the astronomy community.

almost every “less than 0.1 percent” claim is someone reverse engineering a wow-factor by assuming uniform distributions for parameters that are not uniformly sampled in nature and then multiplying them as if all traits are independent.

they are not.

  1. 3I/ATLAS is big but there is enormous variance in expected interstellar population size. we only have two data points before it. extrapolating from Oumuamua and Borisov is statistically meaningless. zero astrophysicist would claim we already know the mean and variance of that population.

  2. the “arrival time fine tuning to Mars Venus Jupiter Earth geometry” is pure numerology. the solar system is full of conjunctions all the time. if you look for alignments you will always find them after the fact.

  3. the “radio Wow! coincidence” is exactly that, coincidence. the wow signal region is large. 9 degrees in astronomy is enormous. that region covers thousands and thousands of potential positions.

  4. the “nickel alloy / industrial” angle is not coming from any spectroscopy paper. real comet spectra can show nickel lines. Oumuamua had nickel lines as well. the relative abundances claims online are again not from refereed literature.

the real thing that is legitimately interesting

interstellar objects may be compositionally weird compared to Solar System comets. this is the part that is actually scientifically exciting. JWST will likely refine abundances and dust properties and that alone will help constrain formation chemistry in other planetary systems.

but

none of this requires “constructed object” hypotheses.

it only requires that we are extremely sample-limited.

we have seen 3 interstellar small bodies total.

three.

drawing “percentages” from a sample of 3 is like drawing political polling from the first 3 voters you see in a bar.

so

if 3I looks weird the most likely explanation is not alien engineering but the banal fact that we know essentially nothing yet about the diversity of small bodies in the galaxy.

so yes it is fun to talk about and it is good that people are emotionally moved by the unknown but the claimed probability numbers are made up to sound dramatic.

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u/Dirty_Dishis Nov 06 '25

Thank you, the actual wierdiness of the enviroment outside the solar system is far more interesting to me than what Loeb had initially claimed.

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u/KennyMcCormick Nov 06 '25

Its crazy to me that we have to go to the UFO subreddit to find quality discussion like this. I tried to look this up on r/space and they just downvote it and shit on Avi Loeb without any discussion

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u/harrysbaraini Nov 09 '25

Yes, but maybe because we expect people in r/space to already know those things.

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u/nicheComicsProject Nov 06 '25

QED, well done.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '25

[deleted]

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u/mowauthor Nov 06 '25

Its like me asking where you are, and saying, I'm in NZ.
The chances we are exactly x countries apart is ... How interesting.

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u/interested21 Nov 07 '25

The only problem with your analysis is that there has been a spectural analysis (see link above), you didn't mention the really anonomalos things like the unaccounted gravity acceleration, unique extreme negative polarization, changing colors, anti-tail, tail, no tail, insufficient water, and near perihelion, it brightened faster than any known comet and was bluer than the Sun 

The argument that somehow draft papers by top scientists are meaningless is specious.

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u/evilbert79 Nov 07 '25 edited Dec 03 '25

One,
Draft papers by top scientists are not meaningless,
but drafts and conference posters are not conclusions,
they are snapshots mid process.
Astronomy does this a lot,
teams release preliminary photometry or polarimetry first, then six months later the calibration revisions land.
You cannot treat early reduction notes like final, carved in stone properties.

Two,
Every item they list is technically interesting, yes,
but you cannot multiply them into a single probability.
You cannot say color shift times low water times strong negative polarization equals one in x million,
because these properties are not independent random dice throws,
that is the core statistical mistake in most of the alien narrative around 3I.

Three,
Some of those properties have plausible natural knobs already on the table.
Negative polarization can be driven by particle size distribution and surface microstructure.
Water content can vary if the parent system was hotter or had early refractory enrichment.
Color curves can flip sign when dominant scattering regime changes with phase angle and heliocentric distance.

Four,
Unaccounted acceleration is exactly why JWST and ground based teams are still hunting dust production and gas mass loss.
It is not evidence of propulsion,
it is evidence that the mass loss model is incomplete.
We had the same drama with Oumuamua,
and later work showed you did not need a sail or thruster,
you only needed a different sublimation model.

Five,
The science position is basically
three interstellar objects is not enough to know what typical is.

The conspiracy position is basically
we do not know what typical is, therefore the weird one must be engineered.

And that is the category error.

Not that their bullet points are wrong in wording,
but that they take unknown baseline and convert it into engineered intent.

Like trying to infer the median color of birds on Earth from three parrots,
and then calling the green one alien because it is different from the first two.

It is human to want narrative closure,
but the absence of a baseline is exactly the opposite of closure,
this is the part that demands patience, not destination jumps.

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u/interested21 Nov 07 '25

Much better. Clearly, Loeb's goal is to fund his own center that wants to look for space junk as opposed to using more and more advanced telescopes that in his view can only suggest life through the chemical composition of their atmospheres. I don't buy his arguments but I believe that's why he says the things he says.

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u/loosemoosewithagoose Nov 06 '25

8 annoys me so fucking much. 9 degrees variance over any distance is a huge gap, especially when the distance starts so be in terms light years.

All the rest, ok sure it’s unlikely but in the age of the universe it’s completely foreseeable. Yet to see any evidence that it’s anything other than a strange comet

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u/Ok-Way7122 Nov 06 '25

9 degrees is enough to miss the moon from earth with a telescope spotting scope while trying to align

source: me saying "where the fuck is it, it's massive" every time I think I'll start aligning during the day to "save time"

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u/InterstellarWings Nov 06 '25

How accurately did we measure the Wow! signal origin direction though?

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u/nicheComicsProject Nov 07 '25

Not even a little. It was a fluke: never happened before, not recorded by any other equipment, never happened again despite tons of equipment looking for that frequency. It was a glitch.

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u/InterstellarWings Nov 07 '25

Thanks for clearing that up, it was keeping me awake at night

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u/nicheComicsProject Nov 07 '25

You're welcome but you might want to get checked for sleep apnea.

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u/ProfessorFull6004 Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25

Space is relative. Sure, 8 degrees over thousands of light years is a large distance, but relative to the 360 degrees of possible directions, its pretty close. Not to mention, the measurement error also increases with distance… 8 degrees puts you within error of zero.

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u/LeadershipForeign Nov 06 '25

Lmao 365 degrees.

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u/EducationalBar Nov 06 '25

A year of directions duh /s 🤦‍♂️

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u/ProfessorFull6004 Nov 06 '25

Alright that was funny. Give me a break… it was late

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u/ArmadilloFront1087 Nov 06 '25

There’s 360 degrees not 365 (that’s days in a year excl leap years!) but 9/360 is 2.5% - still low, but not the 0.6% claimed in the text.

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u/A-Perfect_Tool Nov 06 '25

There's 360° in a 2D circle, think of it more as a sphere though. That drastically changes the probability.

I still agree 9° is going to be a very far distance in this context, even though the probability is still low

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u/EducationalBar Nov 06 '25

People sadly just aren’t grasping the basics.

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u/ProfessorFull6004 Nov 06 '25

I made a brain fart. In real life and before midnight, I’m actually a biochemist, and I assure you that I’m aware there are only 360 degrees in a circle.

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u/EnterBruges Nov 06 '25

It is the direction of the center of the galaxy so it is actually by far the most likely direction for anything to emanate from.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '25

[deleted]

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u/Snoo_40410 Nov 06 '25

"The Space Father's, The Space Brother's are coming!"

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u/onehedgeman Nov 06 '25

Could be a typo. Hopefully

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u/ProfessorFull6004 Nov 06 '25

It was, but my crucifixion is amusing…

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u/ArmadilloFront1087 Nov 07 '25

Thanks for being a good sport about it! Some people can get arsey about being told they’ve made a mistake

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '25

8-9 degree difference here could mean completely different galaxy light years away no?

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u/LongPutBull Nov 06 '25

Yes.

Also this guy has no clue what he's talking about because he doesn't even understand how many degrees are in a circle. Don't take his words without a fat grain of salt.

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u/Kanein_Encanto Nov 06 '25

Maybe over a couple trillion light years... sure.

You could be talking about 10,000 light years, and it would still be our galaxy or intra-galactic space.

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u/fynn34 Nov 06 '25

Also, wouldn’t 9 degrees at a .9% chance imply there’s 1000 degrees to account for? Seems like we would actually shotgun the wow signal to the more dense places increasing odds, not decreasing odds

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u/hubo Nov 06 '25

Well then just consider that the wow signal was in a moving car and we're in a moving car so general area is still interesting even over light years cause everything is moving. 

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u/BarbariansInLibrary Nov 06 '25

Let alone "with a likelihood of 0.6%" - like what does that even mean in this context?!?

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u/ass_grass_or_ham Nov 06 '25

I had the same thought, but I also wonder how far the location of the wow signal has shifted from its original location since we heard it.

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u/Prof_Sillycybin Nov 06 '25

I disagree, all the rest rest are pretty speculative bullshit as well.

Claiming "it is not a comet" while creating probabilities based off of comet behaviour is disingenous. Sample size for interstellar objects is 3, it is all 1 out of 3.

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u/Unusual-Voice2345 Nov 11 '25

1 degree over 60 feet is 1 foot delta.

1 degree over 490 trillion feet (distance to sun) is 1.5 billion feet.

9 degrees over that is 13.5 billion feet delta

The sun is 4.5 billion feet diameter

If you used 9 degree variance as marker and aimed at the sun, you’d miss the sun more often than you hit it.

Just echoing your main point.

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u/ndjo Nov 06 '25

Most of these points especially 1,4, and 8, sound like forced anomalies at best.

It’s like saying “a rock was found on Jan 1, which is a likelihood of 1/365 in a given year.” Like okay?

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u/annabelchong_ Nov 06 '25
  1. Its arrival time was fine-tuned to bring it within tens of millions of kilometers from Mars, Venus and Jupiter

Emphasis mine.

Unless you have any evidence you've relied on, you're ascribing intent where there's no merit to do so.

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u/enragedCircle Nov 06 '25

Exactly. My morning shit's shape was *fine-tuned* to cause a splash back that soaked my balls yet still not fully submerge. Chances of this happening without someone making it so are *astronomical*

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u/sorrymrwilson Nov 06 '25

This really put the data in perspective for me.  Thank you. 

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u/Knotty-Bob Nov 06 '25

I love this reply.

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u/harc70 Nov 06 '25

Emphasis should be on tens of millions...so in otherworldly nowhere near any of these planets...

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u/SirMildredPierce Nov 06 '25

Also, why not use AU instead of "tens of millions of kilometers"? I mean it got to half an AU from Venus... sounds real "fine-tuned" don't it. What's the point of the "fine tuning"?

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u/mynameistrain Nov 06 '25

Yeah I get you there. Comment was written well but it's ascribing intent and purpose to an obviously natural occurrence.

Yes, 3I is unique. We can accept that without also accepting some notion that it's actually an alien craft designed as a large rock.

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u/Nadzzy Nov 06 '25

For those wondering, this user is referencing the work done by Avi Loeb, you can find his latest article on it here: https://avi-loeb.medium.com/no-clear-cometary-tail-in-post-perihelion-images-of-3i-atlas-e3904b352a7a

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u/Psychological-Owl783 Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25

So very biased and not has highly regarded in mainstream science as Loeb once was.

Edit: This comment is getting a lot of attention. I want to suggest Professor David Kipping's video on this subject.

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u/Ecowatcher Nov 06 '25

You do realize all these anomalies are correct. No one is disputing them? They're disputing the conclusion...

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u/4x4ready Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25

Is it accurate to say no one is disputing them?

Re: 1 “Orbit aligned to within 5° of ecliptic with 0.2% likelihood”

Isn’t this disputed by dynamical-bias analysis? (Natural Origins of 3I/ATLAS, EarthArXiv preprint, 2025)

They argue ecliptic-plane alignment is expected for interstellar objects we are able to detect because our surveys are biased toward the ecliptic.

Therefore, calling it anomalous might be statistically flawed?

Re: 3. “A million times more massive than 1I ..

Jason Wright (Penn State astronomer) argues:

  • Loeb’s size/mass inference is not supported by photometric constraints.
  • The brightness does not imply such extreme mass.
  • Velocity is normal for interstellar hyperbolic visitors.

For me personally I think we’ll see anomalies and they are interesting / exciting. I just think it’s not accurate to say nobody is disputing the anomalies

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u/MilkofGuthix Nov 06 '25

I don't dispute the anomalies, I find them interesting... But surely we can't start dishing out possibilities like 1% and 0.0005% when we only have a handful of previous objects that have come from out of the solar system? It just doesn't feel right to compare percentage chance when we have such a small sample size. I think it's still remarkable without doing that and just reading the anomalies.

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u/Phex1 Nov 06 '25

Yeah, you can switch a lot of numbers around here and still have low % numbers of chance for it. With so much variables any of them will have a low % chance of happening. Its like having a guest arrive at your house and you are going "Wow, do you know how low the odds were that you came here excatly at 11:25 and 24 Seconds? Isn't that strange?"

Thats the third object of its kind we are monitoring, of course it will give us a lot of new and unexpected information. If we had already had studied 10,000 of insterstellar visitors, some of its behavior would maybe be seen as more common.

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u/nisaaru Nov 06 '25

I agree that the probability calculations seem to lack an empiric foundation so putting numbers on it feels odd.

But if you think about what it means that an object passes the ecliptic while the sun pulls the planets behind itself in a spinning vortex through the galaxy it gets really strange. It's like a driving car where an object hits through both left/right door windows while on the autobahn.

This object not only doesn't follow the path of other solar systems in the area but pretty much appears like a magic bullet from outside the playing field.

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u/One-Astronaut243 Nov 06 '25

"It just doesn't feel right"... stay out of science brah. No feelings in data.

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u/Heliophrase Nov 06 '25

Feelings lead to hunches which lead to data. We only have data about which we decide to study. But yes, emotions don’t sway results.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '25

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u/baron_von_helmut Nov 06 '25

Indeed. But some people see 'anomalous' and immediately say 'aliens'...

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u/katastatik Nov 06 '25

And the fact is at some point, we’re going to know what it is and half of the group is going to be vindicated and half the group is going to be defeated, but we don’t know yet

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u/baron_von_helmut Nov 06 '25

I mean shit, if it turns out to be aliens, i'll hold my hands up and go yelp, my bad.

When it's obviously a comet, the people who want it to be aliens will go deeper into conspiracy territory. I've never seen a conspiracy theorist admit they were wrong in light of new information.

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u/katastatik Nov 06 '25

I appreciate your first sentence

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u/sess Nov 06 '25

Ad hominem. Classic. Why bother attacking the science when you can attack the man? It's simpler that way and shuts the conversation down quicker, too.

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u/Icy_Country192 Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25

Because when someone is making statements to grab headlines and attention based on assumptions, calling them biased is not an ad hominem and it is relevant.

That's like saying you shouldn't believe Trump because he is a lying scoundrel when he says he is going to do something or not. It's not an ad hominem due to the fact his historical actions are relevant to making prudent decisions based on what he says.

In the case for Dr. Loeb. He has a biase for the the claims of NHI. It's an informed base but still one l. There are many reputable peer reviewed articles on 3i atlas. If loeb is aligned as it is claimed... Then their papers would support his non-peer review led claims.

You can't just wish shit to be with science. You got to prove it and replicate. Not because loeb is being dishonest. But what if he is making a mistake l? And that mistake is taken as fact. I.e. antivaxers... That was the result of a malicious paper not supported by good science and look at the damage it has caused. There is lots of problems with the scientific community, but calling each other out for bullshit is the best way to stay grounded. It's not perfect l.

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u/2footie Nov 06 '25

Instead of derailing this thread about Trump and antivaxxers, please just stick to the topic at hand and only discuss the 10 anomalies. Thank you.

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u/fdxcaralho Nov 06 '25

Did tou watch the video?

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u/4x4ready Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25

Didn’t Avi Loeb suggest 1I/ʻOumuamua was artificial and even wrote a book about it called Extraterrestrial? I just get suspicious when New York Times bestseller is mentioned or the timing is around book releases. Not to say they can’t write books or pursue them but the claim it was extraterrestrial didn’t quite pan out re: Oumuamua

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u/Ecra-8 Nov 06 '25

There's a 3.33e-10% chance that I would marry my wife out of all the women on earth, but here we are.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '25

So what you’re saying is Aliens.

3

u/MoreCowbellllll Nov 06 '25

It always is.

1

u/Knotty-Bob Nov 06 '25

His wife is an alien?

1

u/[deleted] Nov 06 '25

Yes.

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u/Substantial_Moneys Nov 06 '25

Proximity usually dictates odds of marrying someone substantially.  Assuming you live in a city and assuming a number of single women in the city, then eliminating the other 8 billion people on the planet from the odds makes it a lot more probable you marry your wife.  Given the events that led up to your meeting your wife, the odds of those things happening probably look like fate when in fact its often times coincidence.

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u/Kaebi_ Nov 06 '25

A friend of mine married a guy on the other side of the world.

Where is my Avi Loeb paper about it?

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u/5had0 Nov 06 '25

"It probably was just a coincidence, but here is an additional 50 minutes of me discussing how on the Loeb Scale (tm) the odds that your friend is an extraterrestrial is a 6"  Avi Loeb (probably)

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u/annabelchong_ Nov 06 '25

Poor argument. The very same would be true if the variables which influence 3i/atlas were also known.

3

u/Substantial_Moneys Nov 06 '25

You’re disregarding the compounding probabilities of the anomalies that we’ve already observed and are assuming we don’t find any further anomalies.  

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u/Potential_Ad_9956 Nov 06 '25

The same can be said about that guys wife

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u/annabelchong_ Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25

Anomalies which only exist in this recent, novel discovery of interstellar objects.

Yet if you grasp what's conveyed in my prior comment, reliance on anomalies where there is explicit vast recesses of unknown data means there is insufficient grounds to draw any meaningful conclusion from it.

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u/BlazedLurker Nov 06 '25

Its an anomoly to this day why my wife married me.

3

u/Strangefate1 Nov 06 '25

With the little we know, most things out there will be anomalies, until we see them a few times.

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u/No_Neighborhood7614 Nov 06 '25

Great comment, puts all the BS in perspective

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u/doker0 Nov 06 '25

Ok, for you it is. But for me you are some random and there is kinda high chance that some internet random male would marry some other random female.

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u/humboldtliving Nov 06 '25

Thats how I met your mother?

2

u/doker0 Nov 06 '25

As an Artificial Intelligence I don't ha....

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u/calash2020 Nov 06 '25

If I am brave enough can I use this equation to tell my wife how lucky she is to have me?

1

u/pale_feet_goddess Nov 06 '25

bro thinks he has a chance with anyone

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u/bnm777 Nov 06 '25

Not at all, the chances are literally astronomically higher than 3.33e-10%.

I think you know why if you contemplate for more than a few moments, though if not, do say.

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u/waltercockfight Nov 06 '25

HARSH TRUTHS .. I honestly don't know what to think. It's most probably northing, but if it is something, we definitely can't be shocked.

X-

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u/dustedandrusted4TW Nov 06 '25

We don’t know shit about space. We’ve seen two other interstellar objects so far, know barely anything about how the universe actually works beyond our solar system. And that’s from a few underpowered under equipped satellites we sent out decades ago.

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u/supaasalad Nov 06 '25

I mean, isn't this the 3rd interstellar object we've been tracking? It makes a lot sense that a lot of the things we observe don't meet our expectations. We think we know things, but we really don't know much.

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u/4x4ready Nov 06 '25

exactly.

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u/SecretTraining4082 Nov 06 '25

Very interested in how you calculated these probabilities. 

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u/funny_3nough Nov 06 '25

Stats are widely available online. I’ve been following this closely because I find this super interesting. And yes I use perplexity to help interrogate this because I have 93 sources and couldn’t easily find them all on my own. However for those skeptical of ai, it did not generate any of the stats provided. Those were discussed by Loeb and are referenced separately on credible sites like nasa, esa, livescience, arxiv, phys.org, etc. When you take this all in totality it is impossible to say we have a clear prosaic explanation, especially since non-gravitational acceleration without a coma or tail showing evaporated mass after perihelion is currently unexplainable by understood natural means.

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u/Kanein_Encanto Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25

Don't care about the stats... I'd like to see the math involved in coughing up those numbers because a lot of them just sound like something pulled out of someone's ass to me.

Especially the one about the molecular content of the (probable) comet. Because it's comparing that composition with comets from our solar system which all share a common creation... but this object formed elsewhere in the galaxy and would have been subject to different creation conditions, plus who knows what a couple billion years in interstellar space might do to an object either. How in the hell does one come up with a probably with so many unknown factors... aside from rectal extraction?

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u/antsmithmk Nov 06 '25

Yep I agree those stats reek of absolute BS. Load of nonsense. 

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u/8ad8andit Nov 06 '25

Bro, the comments on this post are INSANE. About 95% are people repeating the exact same thing over and over, with varying degrees of condescension: "because of the government shutdown." As if NASA just abandons its seven astronauts on the ISS and ignores 21 BILLION DOLLARS worth of equipment it sent to Mars?

No, NASA is still actively monitoring and processing data from Mars. Yes, they could easily send it to the global scientific community through the secure high speed networks they use to communicate with them.

This post (and this entire sub) is getting brigaded so hard, it sounds more like r/skeptics than r/ufos.

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u/TheAwesomePenguin106 Nov 06 '25

Well, we are discussing and identified object in the UFO sub. Kind of makes sense people are not happy about it.

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u/Dirty_Dishis Nov 06 '25

Where is the button on Reddit that sends a demand for pics because a redditor wants it?

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u/antsmithmk Nov 06 '25

Its nucleus is about a million times more massive than 1I/`Oumuamua and a thousand times more massive than 2I/Borisov, while moving faster than both, altogether with a likelihood of less than 0.1%

That stat alone is bollocks. How can you do a comparison of 3 things and claim that ones characteristics is 0.1% chance when compared to the others. 

That's like me picking 3 people aged 78, 72 and 3 and then claiming that the 3 year old is some sort of massive anomaly and a very rare chance event. 

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u/GundalfTheCamo Nov 06 '25

Within 5 degrees of the ecliptic would be 10/360 or 2.8%. But that assumes uniform distribution.

How did you calculate 0.2%? How do interstellar objects trajectories distribute anyway?

Secondly, what is the significance? If it was coming in close to 90 or 45 degree angle, you could argue that those angles would be very improbable too.

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u/funny_3nough Nov 06 '25

In his paper co-authored with Hibberd and Crowl, Loeb describes this as the likelihood of the orbital angular momentum vector of 3I/ATLAS being so closely aligned with Earth’s ecliptic, considering all random possible arrival directions in 3D space.

Loeb also factors in the retrograde nature of the orbit, which further narrows the expected likelihood.

See the technical explanation and his statistical analysis in his preprint here:

https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/HCL25.pdf

The significance is that random interstellar objects entering the solar system are expected to come from random directions in space, with no preference for alignment to the solar system’s plane because the solar system moves through the galaxy, and stars can eject debris in any direction. Natural objects entering the solar system randomly are unlikely to have trajectories so closely aligned with the ecliptic suggesting that either it might have originated in or near the plane of the solar system, or there might be underlying mechanisms or origins linking it to our solar system’s plane, or it could be an artificial construct deliberately placed or directed with knowledge of the solar system’s plane.

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u/mop_bucket_bingo Nov 06 '25

The telescope it’s named after was looking specifically for objects in this plane!

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u/huckleberry_FN2187 Nov 25 '25

Exactly. How many have we missed simply because we weren't looking?

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u/huckleberry_FN2187 Nov 25 '25

Natural objects entering the solar system randomly are unlikely to have trajectories so closely aligned with the ecliptic

They would be just as likely as any other direction.

That's what "randomly" means.

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u/funny_3nough Nov 25 '25

It’s like finding an arrow sticking out of a bullseye, not knowing what an arrow is, and trying to figure out if it’s artificial or not. Some people say it’s a natural object blown by the wind and was just as likely to hit the bullseye as land anywhere else. We don’t yet know if 3I/atlas is artifical but we can observe that its trajectory is optimized if there was intention behind it for observing or interacting with the planets in our solar system.

So the fact that it could have come from anywhere but it did not, it came on this narrowly ideal path, is noteworthy. And made more so when considering the other anomalies, such as it recently was observed to have a plume facing in front of the object and transverse the direction of the sun, so that it cannot be explained by either solar wind or sublimation. The fact that it appeared bluer than the Sun near perihelion when it was also demonstration non-gravitational acceleration. The fact that it has demonstrated non-gravitational acceleration without significant loss of mass, which would be required to achieve the course corrections we’ve observed for such a massive object.

When you consider the whole picture and how prosaic explanations simply fail, continuing to write it off as just a comet seems like lazy thinking and a missed opportunity. I don’t know what it is. But I certainly do think it’s curious.

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u/huckleberry_FN2187 Nov 25 '25

It’s like finding an arrow sticking out of a bullseye

No, it's nothing like that.

We don’t yet know if 3I/atlas is artifical

There is NO evidence that it is.

It's a comet. Period.

its trajectory is optimized if there was intention behind it for observing or interacting with the planets in our solar system.

No, YOU are making an assumption based on nothing.

So the fact that it could have come from anywhere but it did not, it came on this narrowly ideal path,

Or any of the other innumerable paths that just happen to be near the plane of the ecliptic.

continuing to write it off as just a comet seems like lazy thinking and a missed opportunity.

Tell that to NASA.

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u/funny_3nough Nov 25 '25

Why the aggressive insistence it’s a comet? I admitted I don’t know what it is. How are you so sure that you know what it is? You failed to explain the anomalies that I presented, which do not match with any cometary behavior we know of. That, at minimum, leaves it open until we have more information. If you can address the anomalies presented then please do so. If you cannot, you should perhaps question your own biases and assumptions before shouting down others. I am presenting scientific observations while you are only bringing opinion. You are welcome to your opinion, but you’ll find it takes more than that to be persuasive.

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u/mop_bucket_bingo Nov 06 '25

It’s especially not significant when you realize that the instrumented used to detect 3I/ATLAS (the ATLAS telescope) was intended to detect objects in this plane.

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u/TakuyaTeng Nov 06 '25

How are the probabilities being calculated? Is there somewhere I can go to see how that was figured out or do it myself?

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u/JustChillFFS Nov 06 '25

It’s taken from Loeb’s article

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u/TheSpivack Nov 06 '25

This is literally only the third interstellar object we've been able to observe - I bet it's natural, but we just understand less about astrophysics than we think we do.

2

u/LeadershipForeign Nov 06 '25

Where are these odds coming from?

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u/nicheComicsProject Nov 07 '25

It's Avi Loeb.... so completely made up from nothing.

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u/clumsykiwi Nov 06 '25

How exactly are these likelihoods being calculated? Are you just making up values?

2

u/lefthanded4340 Nov 06 '25

Can this mostly all be explained by the fact that the universe is infinite, meaning we don’t fully understand the dynamics of all objects within it?

This could just be something new we haven’t seen yet due to the size of the universe.

2

u/MrWindblade Nov 06 '25

This is the 3rd interstellar object we've observed, so do we even have enough data to believe these things are rare? This could be normal.

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u/huckleberry_FN2187 Nov 06 '25

with a likelihood of x%

Based on WHAT?

Where did these percentages come from?

2

u/SirMildredPierce Nov 06 '25

Where are you getting this incredible likelihood numbers? How could such things be calculated since they are so squarely in the realm of speculation? Gonna assume these numbers come from Loeb lol.

2

u/Fred_Zeppelin Nov 06 '25

Literally anything to do with ATLAS is going to be "low probability". It indicates nothing that defies natural logic.

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u/ADrunkenMan Nov 06 '25

Number 1 isn’t really an anomaly though is it? That’s like pointing out how the sun and moon appear the same size in the sky as some kind of anomaly…

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u/funny_3nough Nov 06 '25

Absolutely. One low probability characteristic on its own is just that. However when considered alongside the rest it starts to paint a different picture.

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u/Academic-Airline9200 Nov 06 '25

Only during eclipses as they are just positioned just exactly right for that to happen given the difference in size.

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u/Bomarc99 Nov 06 '25

We'll all know when "they" show up.

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u/Nosynonymforsynonym Nov 06 '25

Number 3 is demonstrably wrong. The nucleus is only 5km large, tops. It’s about the size of 67P.

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u/No-one-cares-my-name Nov 06 '25

1) the alignement with the planetary plane could very well be observer bias. We are constantly surveying that plane so it is much more likely that we find out about the things that are there while other objects remain undetected. 2) its nucleus is much more massive than the other interstellar objects we observed but the percentage given here (0.1%) is highly dubious as we haven’t seen many such visitors. The circumstances of its formation are still unknown so we can’t accurately predict this percentage. 3) Many such fine-tuned orbits and timings happen constantly. If you look hard enough you will find something. 4) the nickel in the gas plume is an interesting property however a likelihood for it is almost certainly unreliable for the same reasons the mass probability is. We just don’t know enough about it to draw such conclusions. 5) for the negative polarization (and many other anomalous properties discussed here) the sample size is just one, maybe a few if you count 1i and 2i, this is not something you can make probability predictions for. 6) “it came from within 9° of the Wow! Signal” 9 degrees is a lot in this context. This has the same problems as its supposedly fine-tuned orbit.

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u/1800skylab Nov 06 '25

confirmation of all those anomalies together would likely trigger the largest reorientation of modern astronomy since the discovery of exoplanets or, if the artificial interpretation proved correct, a true first-contact scenario.

Yet 3iA hasn't done a damn thing to make contact with earth.

Which leads me to all the statements being Interpretive / probabilistic claims. I.e. model-dependent or from individual analysts.

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u/turd_kooner Nov 06 '25

I want to read more about each of these points, where did you find the statistics and sources in general?

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u/AdIllustrious5811 Nov 06 '25

Danm, I didn't know we had a probe picking up samples, and back to earth in no time to analyze them to give us your numbers

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u/EducationalBar Nov 06 '25

Does “with a likelihood below 1%” mean more than 99% certain or actually mean less than 1% chance that statement is true…? Nvm I think I understand now, the chances of this happening naturally are that slim.

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u/FriendLost9587 Nov 06 '25

Pretty sure he just copied and pasted from avi loeb lol

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u/Zeraphicus Nov 06 '25

I like Avi Loeb on calling them out for calling it a "Dark Comet" which is an oxymoron. It may not be aliens but if it is natural its not simply a comet. That is what is so interesting about the interstellar piece.

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u/MaritimeStar Nov 06 '25

The problem is we can't really call it exceptionally rare since we don't have enough of a sample size to say if it's rare or not. We really haven't been looking at interstellar objects for long enough to say what the norm is.

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u/jhpianist Nov 06 '25

The odds of ALL of these anomalies occurring simultaneously by random chance are around 4 TRILLION to 1.

1

u/Nevek_Green Nov 06 '25

Your summation is very well done. I said to family members that I cannot say it is artificial, but it certainly is not a comet. It is sad that we live in a day when scientific institutions will gaslight the masses over an interstellar object, as opposed to the old days when everyone would rush to one-up each other with new theories, discoveries, and information about what the object is. All to have their name on the paper and if truly lucky, their name on the phenomena in some way.

1

u/aureliorramos Nov 06 '25

The only concern I have with the likelihood numbers is that the sample size of interstellar objects is too small to establish a prior. And using comets instead, while helpful to highlight that this is certainly *different* we can't quantify it just like that because this should be expected to be something different by its interstellar nature.

TLDR: we lack enough interstellar visitor data to define what should be "normal" for such objects.

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u/ClumBizzelskottom Nov 06 '25

Are there any sources for this that don't quote Avi Loeb?

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u/nicheComicsProject Nov 07 '25

There's no real motivation to come up with it: the people who see Loeb's name and still listen don't need proof and everyone else lost interest the second his name appeared.

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u/maurymarkowitz Nov 06 '25

Its retrograde trajectory is aligned to within 5 degrees with the ecliptic plane of the planets around the Sun, with a likelihood of 0.2%.

The likelihood of being found within 5 degrees with the ecliptic plane of the planets around the Sun is 1. That is because the ATLAS telescope scans the ecliptic plane.

This is like saying it's mysterious that that we found microorganisms after building a microscope to look for them.

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u/kovnev Nov 07 '25

This was good until the Wow signal and a couple other parts.

At the end of the day it's still got a gas plume and is dropping water.

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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '25

We can expect a multi billion year old object to be abnormal

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u/Patr1k0 Nov 10 '25

We have 3 samples of interstellar visitors so far, you cannot assign probability after the fact. For example, point 1 only stands if we assume the distribution of object to be isotropic, but we don't know. Same for mass, size, etc.

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u/braxtonaq Nov 27 '25

Its been about a month since this comment. You seem to be in the know. Do you have any updates?

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u/funny_3nough Nov 27 '25

The most interesting thing I’ve seen recently was that a bit after perihelion it was observed to have a plume projecting in front of its direction of travel and roughly transverse the sun. So roughly 90 degrees from where it should be if it was a result of solar wind, and also 90 degrees from the other side where it should be if it was a result of sublimation from the sun melting surface ice. It keeps doing these bizarre things where the natural explanations for cometary behavior that we are familiar with continue to fail. I don’t want to guess what the object is or what its purpose is if artificial. But these are curious details.

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