My thoughts on 3I/ATLAS

As many people are aware, there is currently an object speeding through our solar system, designated 3I/ATLAS. It's our third confirmed interstellar visitor that we have detected.

1I/'Oumuamua discovered in 2017, was the first interstellar object detected in the solar system. It had an elongated shape and no typical comet tail, leading to debates about its nature.

2I/Borisov: Discovered in 2019, is known for its unusual behavior and has been studied for its dynamics and origin.

3/Atlas, about the size of a small mountain, is currently flying through our solar system, from a place somewhere in interstellar space. The odds of its particular trajectory happening naturally are less than one in a million.

3I/Atlas is doing things that's making astronomers very, very nervous. Let’s put this into context; space is immeasurably vast. Objects from other star systems don't just randomly thread the needle between multiple planets. It's like throwing a dart from New York and hitting a specific window in Tokyo. Blindfolded. But 3I/ATLAS? It passed within 29 million km of Mars last week. And this March, it'll swing by Jupiter at 54 million km.

You might think that these distances are far away, but in galactic distances, that is pretty close.

The probability of this happening by chance? About 0.0000004. That's a 1 in 2.5 million shot. Those are pretty low odds. But there’s more. As some may know, when you're looking for planets around other stars, you can only see them if their orbit lines up just right, so they pass in front of their star. Think about that for a second. If extraterrestrial intelligences were looking for Earth the same way we look for exoplanets, they'd need to be positioned within a specific viewing angle.

Now here's where it gets really interesting: 3I/ATLAS is tilted at exactly 5 degrees from our solar system's plane. Could this be random? Maybe. Or maybe not. Now, if you wanted to observe ALL of our solar system—not just the planets but also our asteroid belt—you'd need to be positioned within about 10 degrees of our orbital plane. And 5 degrees? That's right in the perfect observational spot.

3I/ATLAS is absolutely enormous. It weighs by all scientific calculations, over 33 BILLION tons. That's 6 million times heavier than humanity's biggest rocket. It is larger than Manhattan. Let’s just assume for a moment, that it was sent, and not a run of the mill comet. Whatever sent this would have had technology that makes us look like we're still learning how to make fire.

Here's some interesting and possibly scary facts about I3/Atlas This object has shown SEVEN different anomalies. Its size is wrong. Its composition is weird. It's producing jets we can't explain. Its polarization doesn't match any known comet. Even its timing is suspicious. The timing of the passthrough brings it close to 3 different planets in the journey through our solar system.

Remember the famous "Wow! Signal" from 1977? That mysterious radio burst that some scientists theorized might have been aliens trying to contact us. 3I/ATLAS's trajectory aligns perfectly with where that signal came from.

I know people think that this is all coincidence and borderline crazy. But here's the thing, when facing something unprecedented, a true unknown, you cannot box yourself into a comfortable mindset. All options have to be on the table. Science is about having an open mind and facing the unknown, no matter how uncomfortable it could be.

Hopefully, soon, we will get answers. Right now, we have seven spacecraft around Mars and 2 near Jupiter. They all should be able to get a close look at 3I/Atlas as it passes by. MRO, Mars Express, MAVEN, Juno... our entire fleet of probes is about to train their cameras on this visitor.

Think about what this means: IF this IS artificial, we would be witnessing humanity's first confirmed contact with an extraterrestrial technology. Not a signal. Not a mere possibility, but an actual object, right here in our solar system.

And if it's natural? Then nature just pulled off a one-in-a-million coincidence that perfectly mimics what an alien probe would do.

Either way, we're learning something profound about our universe. The next few months are going to be very, very. Every new image, every spectrum reading, every data point could be the one that changes everything. Makes you wonder: if advanced civilizations are sending probes to neighbor or distant star systems, how many have already passed through ours undetected? How many did we miss because we weren't looking, or didn’t not have the technology to see them? And here's the real thing to think about: iF 3I/ATLAS was sent here intentionally, it means someone, somewhere, spotted our little hunk of rock floating amongst the cosmos and possibly thought: “Let’s check out what is going on with that planet, with all the noise they are making with those nuclear devices.” There is the possibility that we might not be as alone as we thought.

Watch the skies in March. History could pass right over our heads.