{"id":253727,"date":"2025-12-27T08:35:25","date_gmt":"2025-12-27T08:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/253727\/"},"modified":"2025-12-27T08:35:25","modified_gmt":"2025-12-27T08:35:25","slug":"scientist-makes-extremely-puzzling-find-on-spaceship-3i-atlas-that-shouldnt-be-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/253727\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientist makes ‘extremely puzzling’ find on ‘spaceship’ 3I\/ATLAS that shouldn’t be there"},"content":{"rendered":"

The mysterious flying object making its way through our solar system has yet again baffled scientists \u2013 with 3I\/ATLAS carrying a ‘puzzling’ secret that shouldn’t be there<\/p>\n

11:09, 26 Dec 2025Updated 11:14, 26 Dec 2025<\/p>\n

\"3I\/ATLAS\"Some experts have suggested the comet could be a ‘spaceship’ <\/p>\n

Scientist and Harvard professor Avi Loeb has found something “extremely puzzling” on the “spaceship” 3I\/ATLAS that he believes shouldn’t be there.<\/p>\n

A mysterious flying object entered our solar system many months ago,<\/a> leaving several experts baffled. It has been closely tracked, with some theories suggesting it could even be an intelligence system from another far-away galaxy<\/a>. While NASA sources say the object is merely a comet, Loeb has shared several theories on why this could not be the case.<\/p>\n

His latest theory, as detailed in his personal blog, suggests the comet has a strange feature which could not translate to a simple comet<\/a>. He wrote: \u201cAt the distances at which comets are observed, the temperature is far too low to vaporise silicate, sulfide, and metallic grains that contain nickel and iron atoms.<\/p>\n

\"3I\/ATLAS\"Experts are ‘puzzled'(Image: avi-loeb.medium.com)<\/p>\n

“Therefore, the presence of nickel and iron atoms in cometary coma is extremely puzzling\u2026 3I\/ATLAS, which is a C2-depleted comet, exhibits extreme properties in the early phases of its activity with regard to the production rates and abundance ratios of nickel and iron”.<\/p>\n

But Loeb’s theories have been contradictory. Just days ago, he told NewsNation: \u201cAt this point, given all the data that we have, I would agree that it\u2019s most likely natural, but there are still a lot of things we don\u2019t understand about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a recent update to his popular Medium blog, the astrophysicist has now discussed “radio signals” which seem to have emitted from 3I\/ATLAS. In a comedown from his previous claims, he says that “the vast majority” of radio hits “did not coincide with 3I\/ATLAS in the sky”.<\/p>\n

\"3I\/ATLAS\"Scientists have been watching the issue closely (Image: ESA\/Hubble\/NASA\/ESO\/M.Kornmesser \/ SWNS)<\/p>\n

Avi Loeb wrote: “A new paper reports data from 7.25 hours during July 2, 2025 of radio observations of the interstellar object 3I\/ATLAS with the Allen Telescope Array. Within the frequency range of 1\u20139 GHz, there were nearly 74 million narrowband hits.<\/p>\n

“After mitigating Radio Frequency Interference in the dataset, only about 2 million hits were left. These hits were further filtered by sky localisation.<\/p>\n

\"3I\/ATLAS\"The object will pass by Jupiter in three months(Image: AP)<\/p>\n

“The vast majority of them did not coincide with 3I\/ATLAS in the sky. The remaining 211 hits were visually inspected in the time-frequency domain and the observers did not find any signals worthy of additional follow-up.<\/p>\n

The next big milestone for 3I\/ATLAS is in March 2026, when it is expected to pass near Jupiter.<\/p>\n

For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our <\/strong>newsletters <\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The mysterious flying object making its way through our solar system has yet again baffled scientists \u2013 with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[270],"tags":[48362,18,19,17,1024,133,451,131658],"class_list":{"0":"post-253727","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-alien","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-nasa","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-space","15":"tag-spaced-out"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115790619066185803","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}