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Professor Loeb acknowledges the blue appearance could potentially indicate ionized carbon monoxide emissions consistent with natural comet chemistry, yet he refuses to dismiss the alternative hypothesis that has made 3I/ATLAS a subject of intense debate since its discovery.

The possibility of an internal propulsion system or artificial light source remains on the table as scientists await definitive observational data. The measured acceleration level produces only a modest spatial deviation of roughly ten times Earth's radius over a month, insufficient to significantly alter the object's gravitational path toward any Solar System planet, yet substantial enough to confirm something beyond pure gravitational forces is acting on 3I/ATLAS.

Drawing from his experience leading Harvard's Institute for Theory and Computation, Loeb emphasized during a recent astrophysics luncheon that dismissing observational anomalies simply because they lack elegant theoretical explanations represents poor scientific practice.

The comment, made in the context of cosmological puzzles regarding universe expansion rates, applies directly to the 3I/ATLAS situation. With thermal ejection speeds for natural comets typically reaching only a few hundred meters per second, the documented acceleration demands either unprecedented volatile activity or a reconsideration of the object's fundamental nature.

What's Next

The ESA Juice spacecraft observations during the first week of November 2025 will provide the initial crucial data on whether massive gas plumes surround 3I/ATLAS, offering the first test of the natural outgassing hypothesis.

The definitive observational window arrives December 19, 2025, when 3I/ATLAS reaches its closest point to Earth, allowing multiple space telescopes and hundreds of ground-based observatories to conduct detailed spectroscopic analysis, thermal imaging and mass-loss measurements.

These observations will determine whether the object lost approximately ten percent of its mass during perihelion passage, effectively resolving whether conventional comet physics can account for the non-gravitational acceleration or whether the scientific community must confront more extraordinary possibilities.

Any detection of artificial signatures or failure to observe expected natural outgassing would intensify scrutiny of 3I/ATLAS as potentially the first confirmed technological artifact from beyond our Solar System.

Sources

Harvard Professor Avi Loeb's research paper, October 31, 2025

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory navigation report by Davide Farnocchia