Avi Loeb is playing games with his peculiar interpretation of interstellar object 3I/ATLAS. He keeps suggesting that this interesting, carbon-rich, and very old rock is an artificial construct built by a distant civilization, that it is a probe sent to examine our solar system, and that it could be a “Trojan horse” that will do something, who knows what, when it arrives.
Reading some his justifications for that claim, I am forced to conclude that he is an idiot putting on a display to get attention.
Worse, he’s a bad scientist whoring irrational claims and calculations that he has to know are invalid. I am not an astronomer, but I do understand logic a little bit, and seeing him derive extravagant conclusions from mundane observations hurts, especially since he’s using them to obscure the really interesting (and entirely natural) interpretations of the data.
For instance, he’s on the record for inferring the probability that 3I/ATLAS is an alien space probe on the basis of “anomalies” that turn out to not be anomalous at all, just unique properties of an interstellar comet.
As of now, I assign a 30–40% likelihood that 3I/ATLAS does not have a fully natural origin, based on its seven anomalies that I listed here. This low-probability scenario includes the possibility of a black swan event akin to a Trojan Horse, where a technological object masquerades as a natural comet.
Show your work, Avi. How did you calculate that 30-40% likelihood? I think he got it by fumbling about in his rectum and pulling out a squishy number that he likes because it fits his presuppositions. There is nothing in his list of seven “anomalies” to warrant that degree of estimation. They aren’t even anomalies, he’s just looking at the brute facts of its existence and declaring that the details are improbable. Of course they are! It’s a unique object in space!
I tried looking at his list. I am unimpressed.
Anomalies that could be alleviated or explained away with upcoming data:
1. Size: The diameter of 3I/ATLAS is larger than 5 kilometers, making its minimum mass of 33 billion tons, larger by a factor of a thousand to a million than the mass of the second and first interstellar objects (as derived here).
OK, it has a size. That is not anomalous. Call me when you observe an object that is massless–that would be anomalous. I don’t see how finding that it has a mass of 33 billion tons makes it more likely to be artificial than if it had a mass of 3 billion tons or 333 billion tons.
I also don’t see how more data would explain away the mass.
It’s also a fuzzy blob far away and hard to resolve. The size is subject to revision, so how do you conclude anything from a measurement with so much variability?
Initial estimates suggested 3I/ATLAS might be up 20 kilometers (12 miles) across—very big for a comet—but most astronomers now think it is much smaller. “It’s probably somewhere in the range of one or two kilometers,” says John Noonan at Auburn University in Alabama. That would be somewhat comparable in size to our first two interstellar visitors: 1I/ʻOumuamua, which was discovered in 2017 and was up to about 400 meters (0.25 mile) long, and 2I/Borisov, which was found in 2019 and was about one kilometer (0.6 mile) wide.
It doesn’t matter — any number you attach to it will be used by Loeb to claim it is probably artificial.
2. Jet: The Hubble image of 3I/ATLAS showed a forward jet of scattered sunlight — 10 times longer than it is wide, pointing towards the Sun (as discussed here). A weak tail showed up only at the end of August (as reported here).
Yes? It’s apparently a carbon-rich object, and gasses are sublimating off of it and spewing in the direction of the heat source, the Sun, that is thawing them, making an anti-tail. How does that make it more likely that it is artificial? It has a chemical composition is what that tells me.
3. Unusual chemical composition: the plume of gas around 3I/ATLAS showed much more nickel than iron (as discussed here and here), as in industrial nickel alloys. Unlike solar system comets, the plume contained mostly carbon dioxide and not water (as reported here and here).
Note the dishonest trick he’s pulling here, comparing it to “industrial nickel alloys.” These are estimates of the composition of the comet made from the spectroscopy of the diffuse cloud of gas surrounding it, not a determination that it’s made of metal alloys.
It actually is an interesting difference — its composition differs from more familiar comets found in our solar system. That composition also seems to be changing over time, which is somewhat odd, but explainable.
To make sense of this mystery, scientists turned to chemistry — specifically, to organometallic compounds, which are molecules containing both metal atoms and carbon-based groups.
In particular, they looked at compounds called carbonyls: nickel tetracarbonyl (Ni(CO)₄) and iron pentacarbonyl (Fe(CO)₅). Both can form under cold, low-pressure conditions, like those found in the outer reaches of a protoplanetary disk — the birthplace of comets and planets alike.
These carbonyls are highly volatile, meaning they can sublimate (turn from solid to gas) at relatively low temperatures. Nickel tetracarbonyl is more volatile than its iron counterpart, meaning it will vaporize first as the comet warms up.
This neatly explained what the VLT was seeing. When 3I/ATLAS was still far from the sun, only nickel tetracarbonyl had begun to sublimate, filling the coma with nickel. As the comet drew closer, the temperature crossed the sublimation threshold for iron pentacarbonyl — and suddenly, iron began to appear. The Ni/Fe ratio plummeted, not because the amount of nickel was decreasing, but because iron was finally joining the show.
Now, though, somebody needs to explain to me how being composed of volatile organometallic compounds is a signature of artificial manufacture.
4. Polarization: the light from 3I/ATLAS showed extreme negative polarization (as reported here).
I read the paper, and I must admit, the topic is beyond me. It does say that 3I/ATLAS has distinct, unique polarization properties and that “Its polarimetric characteristics provide novel insights into the dust properties of interstellar objects, suggesting that ISOs may encompass a broader diversity than previously recognised,” but does not even come close to implying that this is a marker of artificiality.
Anomalies that will remain puzzling forever:
5. The trajectory of 3I/ATLAS is aligned with the ecliptic plane of planets around the Sun to within 5 degrees (0.2% likelihood), as discussed here.
It has a trajectory. That is not anomalous. Every object moving through space has one. Yes, this trajectory is roughly similar to the ecliptic plane, but so what? 3I/ATLAS is very old, between 3 and 14 billion years old, is Loeb suggesting that aliens aimed their space probe at a condensing protosystem before the planets existed in order to tour potential planets?
6. The arrival time of 3I/ATLAS was optimized to pass near Mars, Venus and Jupiter (0.005% likelihood), as discussed here.
“optimized”…such misleading language, implying intent behind its trajectory. Here’s what that trajectory looks like:
Ooooh. Does that look like a pre-planned course to you? It does to Avi Loeb.
7. The arrival direction of 3I/ATLAS is aligned to within 9 degrees with the “Wow! Signal” from August 15, 1977 (0.6% likelihood), as discussed here.
The “wow” signal was a brief, unexplained, unrepeated pulse of radio signal noise. It got SETI researchers very excited for a while, but there’s no reason to think it is a message from space aliens, and Loeb is making an exceptionally tenuous connection between it and 3I/ATLAS. A 9 degree difference is an immense difference in location at the astronomical distances we’re talking about.
You know, as an atheist I read far too much nonsense from religious apologists claiming to have proof of their god’s existence — bizarre non sequiturs about physical constants and numerological coincidences, collections of anecdotes that are supposed to add up to evidence, and a tiny set of permutations on the same old arguments that even in their best interpretations don’t make up a justification for their beliefs. Reading Avi Loeb’s work gave me a strong sense of deja vu. It’s the same thing! A good analysis of a phenomenon should lead one to a minimal conclusion, but everything Loeb does ends up supporting the remarkable interpretation that God Aliens exist, and they want to talk to you, and this tiny fragment of data is how they shout at you, Occam’s Razor be damned.
I’m going to say it: Loeb has gone batty, and all this noise he makes is nothing but a dedicated (and successful!) effort to get his name in the tabloids. He’s the Percival Lowell of our generation, a scientist who did good work but whose reputation was poisoned by his irrational pursuit of astronomical phantasms, the Martian canals in one case and this alien obsession in Loeb’s.
To quote the second paper (Hutsemékers et al.),
Easy to miss. It’s only from the abstract.
He has a sample size of three here.
We’ve just recently began to even see interstellar objects that are passing through.
How does he know what the size of a typical or possible interstellar object actually is?
It looks to me like a common size for a comet, interstellar or solar.
To me, those drawings of Lowell’s look a lot more like spiders in their webs than canals. Just think of all the sci-fi plots this interpretation would have generated.
When I first saw 3I/Atlas’s trajectory, my initial thought was, if this is an alien probe, why isn’t it on a course to observe Earth, the most interesting planet in our solar system? But it will not come close to our planet. It will be on the other side of the Sun as it shoots past at 40 miles per second. Hardly what I’d call very good alien navigation.
I’m not sure what Loeb’s game is. He recently said that there isn’t enough rocky material in interstellar space to account for this comet’s mass. Wah? That’s a stupid thing for an astrophysicist to say. Space is vast, literally billions of light years across. I suspect there’s plenty of rocky material zipping around the universe to account for countless very large comets.
Wake me 3I/Atlas makes a sudden course correction as it passes the sun and comes back in our direction. Until then, Loeb should just shut up.
…and that it could be a “Trojan horse” that will do something, who knows what, when it arrives.
YAWN * If I want to read about creepy alien probes coming here with inscrutable scary motives, I can just read Liu Cixin. He at least knows enough to make even the weirdest alien-probe scenario sound plausible.
…if this is an alien probe, why isn’t it on a course to observe Earth, the most interesting planet in our solar system?
As some authors have pointed out, some might consider Jupiter (and its moons) to be more interesting than Earth. But this piece of rock isn’t going there either.
It’s probably a shipping container of self-sealing stem bolts headed to Mars for someone’s factory there.
Loeb seems to be heading in the direction of Michio Kaku. A guy with legit science credentials who leverages that to make money and generate fame off the tabloids, pop science genre, and the fringe beliefs crowd. A decade ago no one had heard of Loeb, and now he’s popular. Ironically a lot of people are using an appeal to authority argument to justify their belief in him. “He’s a scientist at Harvard, he has to be right!” Whereas if Joe Smith at Princeton says stuff they don’t like then he must be part of the coverup.
Hey Harvard, your kook is showing.
At least, as this is 3I, we shouldn’t be seeing any more interstellar objects. After all, they do things in threes…
oh, makes sense that the object contains more nickel than iron. that must mean it is made out of Invar, a nickel-iron alloy that has a very low coefficient of thermal expansion. you don’t want your interstellar probe to have differential expansion and break apart as it flies by it’s target.
He is such a disgrace that he is ruining what I would love to have been able “wish for” under normal circumstances, i.e., that it is indeed intelligent alien contact.* I just can’t stomach the thought that he turns out to be right in the broken clock sense.
Even given the possibility that we quickly regretted the contact.
Are there precedents for this idea prior to Arthur Clarke please?
I forgot Micromégas
#13 Micromegas are fantastic particle detectors. We use them at Jefferson Lab.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroMegas_detector
@2 raven
We’re about to find many more interstellar interlopers—here’s how to visit one
He is (was?) a respected astrophysicist and cosmologist. He does not go near the telescopes making the observations he uses. He claimed that the images of 3I/ATLAS showing a tail were trailed. Apparently because the experts running the scopes, who image comets and asteroids all the time, don’t know what they are doing. He’s either a fool for displaying his ignorance in public, or a fraud fueling the grift.
#14. Their HiFi equipment is good too!
Maybe Loeb is aiming for a gig on Ancient Aliens or something similar that is polluting TV? His way of argumentation fits perfectly into this series: “This symbol on this old temple looks like the sun, similar to hundreds of similar sun symbols, but what if it is a spaceship instead?” Followed by 45 min of baseless speculations about the type of spaceship, where it came from and what the aliens wanted on Earth.
@12. submoron : “Are there precedents for this idea prior to Arthur Clarke please?
Edward Everett Hales 1869 Brick Moon maybe?
See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brick_Moon
Really loved Clarke’s Rama series as akid thoánd fond memories of it now. Loeb won’t spoil those.
tho’ and
Those aliens engineered this thing for interstellar distances and times – and yet their fancy nickel alloys are being outgassed as iodine salts!
@5. Raging Bee : “As some authors have pointed out, some might consider Jupiter (and its moons) to be more interesting than Earth. But this piece of rock isn’t going there either.”
Whilst others prefer Pluto. Specifically me among maybe others too.
Speculation but if you are living on a tiny comet then Pluto must seem a reasonable and intresting bigger environment with similar v cold outer shell & (speculative) warm inner environment that’s inhabited) Perhaops Pluto is their target of most intrestand opportunity? Make sense? ..
Also Pluto signals its love with the giant heart that’s Sputnik Planitia* – in human at least. Could spin whole grand SF fantasies outta that… & I mentally I do.
Could I make money from doing that? Doubt it but.. Fun to contemplate anyhow. More credible than Loeb or Jove? Equally so?
.* Or : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tombaugh_Regio
@21. Reginald Selkirk : Bet they are salty about that!
I have no idea how they came up with the probability of 0.2% for a random trajectory being within 5° of the ecliptic. If the plane of the object’s orbit is random, I get an answer closer to 20%. The plane is uniquely determined by the angle it makes with the ecliptic and the direction of the line of their intersection. Draw a line in the plane of the object’s orbit that is perpendicular to the line of intersection, and project it onto the celestial sphere, and that uniquely specifies the plane of the orbit. Then the problem becomes what is the probability of a random point on the celestial sphere being within 5° of the ecliptic, which is the same problem as “how much of the surface area of a sphere is within 5° of its ‘equator’?”
I suspect the way they’re computing the probability was contrived to give a small number. Perhaps they’re making unwarranted assumptions about the likelihood of various orbital planes.
Psssst .. Secret code – Iodine salts – Io = =Volcanic moon of Jupiter. Dine = brand of cat food*.
These Atlasian aliens are trying to tell us they are alien overlord Spaaaaaaace Cats on Io and they need feeding.
Be careful – next time they’ll whack us with a giant furry padded cometary (?) claw to make sure we’re awake and about to send a space mission to feed them!
.* They have that in other nations not just here in Oz yeah?
As I read through PZ’s post I kept thinking, how angry and nauseated I get seeing his work show up in the mainstream media outlets. Then near the end PZ says this.
“all this noise he makes is nothing a dedicated (and successful!) effort to get his name in the tabloids.”
@ Deborah Goldsmith : I think we can safely assume there’s some unwarranted assumptions in Loeb’s speculations yeah.
Meanwhile, in actual, scientific interstellar comet news – seems 31 / Atlas is going green – literally :
Source : https://www.livescience.com/space/comets/interstellar-comet-3i-atlas-could-be-turning-bright-green-surprising-new-photos-reveal
(May come up with annoying box thingy asking you to do something but you can click close on that & it’ll work at least it did for me. Irritating still.)
Oh and same article also notes :
Huh. Surprisingly reasonable of him there.
Deborah Goldsmith @24: No, I think they got that right. The question is; if the (hyperbolic) orbit of the body is in a plane centred at the sun, what is the probability that the plane is within 5 degrees of the ecliptic plane? Equivalently, what is the probability that the unit normal vectors to each plane are within 5 degrees of each other?
The probability is equal to the surface area of a disc on the unit sphere centred around the pole, with a radius of ω = (5/57.3) radians, divided by the unit sphere’s surface area (4π).
Disc area = πω², so probability is (ω)²/4 = 0.0019
There are SO MANY astronomical news items right now that dors not require getting into the “alien” quagmire.
We recently discovered an extremely early star orbiting in the Milky Way halo.
Gravitational lensing discovered a relatively small object (one million solar masses) five billion light years away.
A Jupiter-sized object without a star, 20 light years away.
Loeb was talking to Newsmax recently. Perhaps someone needs to talk to him about his willingness to respond to a crank channel like that.
Further to #29: Deborah, what you were calculating was the probability that a body crosses an imaginary sphere around the sun within 5 degrees of the ecliptic. But such a body could still have an orbital plane at a large angle to the ecliptic. So that vastly overcounts the number of possibilities.
… all this noise he makes is nothing a dedicated (and successful!) effort to get his name in the tabloids.
Maybe Loeb’ll read this post and make the logical connection – proposed headline for very-soon edition of NY Post:
#25 @StevoR
Dine is made by the megacorp Mars Petcare. Coincidence? I think not. (The Unitedstatian version of that packaging would have the brand-name Sheba on it)
Attractive he is to mainstream media on slow news days, but at least with some balance:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-13/controversy-over-harvard-research-into-manus-island-metor-png/102592908
@4 John Watts
I’m not saying it’s aliens, but
One conclusion I’ve drawn from our exoplanet search is that it’s hard to tell if something looks Earth-like from a great distance. That should apply the other way around, too — Earth should not look particularly interesting from far away, either. To assume otherwise is a tad conceited.
I think that some people should read less and think more. And with read less I mean that Loeb seems to draw his ideas from “The Expanse” and the Silicon Valley Fascists are obviously high on a “Culture” supply.
Can you take a hit? If yes, read on: It is hardly possible to directly see anything that HAS mass, because our eyes only respond to photons.
By the way, the universe is estimated to be about 13.8 billion years old, so if that is true, the age of the interstellar object is unlikely to exceed that age.
drdrdrdrdralhazeneuler, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_visual_phenomena
(Baryons are not photons)
@ Morales
From your link:
Nothing to suggest “our eyes only respond to photons” is false.
@2
a small sample of 3 is so small compared to the size of the Universe and the time it has existed and the brief length of time we have existed with any ability to look and find said sample that it can barely even be considered a sample at all. any conclusion much beyond the most simple basic ones are about as valid as any made by our stone-aged ancestors or a stoned out Hill Billy or a scientist out for the money and fame like we have here.
@36. The Trump helping troll :
Actually it is rather staggering what we can discover about exoplanets from extremely great (Understatement!) literally astronomical distances.
For instance, that we can find exoplanets at all, that we can determine their mases and even sometimes their atmospheres including atmospheres – or lack of atmospheres – around Earth mass or below worlds in systems like Trappist-1.
Its true that this is unsurprisingly extremely difficult and, of course, there’s a lot we still don’t know and learning but we’ve been doing this for less than fifty years now and obvs if there are any ETI’s they are likely to be older and have had more time to perfect that and learn and so would probably find Earth interesting – assuming they find such planets interesting and aren’t biased towards say Pluto-like ones as more typically hosting life as they know it or things they are interested in.
More real spaaaaace neeeews about the latest interstellar comet here :
Source : https://www.space.com/astronomy/comets/interstellar-comet-3i-atlas-is-leaking-water-like-a-fire-hose-running-at-full-blast-new-study-finds