Mysterious Interstellar Object Has Sprouted a Tendril Reaching Toward the Sun
Breakthrough Listen and the Search for Signals
On December 19, as 3I/ATLAS passed within approximately 167 million miles of Earth, an international team of researchers affiliated with Breakthrough Listen used the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia—the largest fully steerable single-dish radio telescope in the world—to search for possible artificial radio emissions.
According to a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper summarized by the SETI Institute, the results were sobering but unsurprising.
“No artificial radio emission localized to 3I/ATLAS was detected,” SETI noted on its website.
The researchers added that “3I/ATLAS continues to behave as expected from natural astrophysical processes,” while emphasizing that its rarity still makes it “an extremely interesting target for observation.”
More information on the findings can be found via the SETI Institute and the Breakthrough Listen project.
Avi Loeb and the Possibility of Alien Technology in 31/ATLAS
Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, known for his controversial interpretations of interstellar objects, has argued that the possibility of alien technology—however remote—cannot yet be fully dismissed. Loeb has even developed a “Loeb Scale” to quantify how likely an interstellar object is to be artificial, ranging from zero (natural rock) to ten (confirmed alien technology).
