Overview
- Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb floats a speculative hypothesis that 3I/ATLAS could be extraterrestrial technology, a claim amplified on social media by ufologist Jaime Maussan.
- Professional astronomers including Héctor Socas, Chris Lintott and Darryl Seligman reject the artifact idea, citing clear cometary activity such as a coma and tail and noting observer bias in where surveys look.
- NASA characterizes 3I/ATLAS as a natural interstellar comet on a hyperbolic path with no impact risk to Earth.
- Orbital solutions place perihelion around October 29–30, 2025 and the closest Earth approach at roughly 270 million kilometers on December 19, 2025.
- Observations report an unusually CO2‑rich composition and early tail formation, and the object—discovered July 1, 2025 by the ATLAS telescope in Río Hurtado, Chile—is the third interstellar visitor after 'Oumuamua and Borisov.