{"id":842250,"date":"2026-06-03T20:51:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T20:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/842250\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T20:51:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T20:51:22","slug":"radio-scans-find-no-alien-tech-from-the-latest-interstellar-comet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/842250\/","title":{"rendered":"Radio scans find no alien tech from the latest interstellar comet"},"content":{"rendered":"

By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer<\/strong><\/p>\n

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) \u2014 The group leading the charge in the search for extraterrestrial life has given the all clear: An interstellar comet<\/a> looks to be completely natural and free of any alien tech.<\/p>\n

The SETI Institute said Wednesday that extensive radio scans by its telescope in Northern California found no signs of otherworldly technology from our solar system\u2019s latest interstellar visitor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The object labeled 3I\/Atlas<\/a> was discovered last summer sweeping through our neck of the cosmic woods. Scientists quickly identified it as a comet that migrated from another star, although a few insisted without evidence it might be associated with intelligent life.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s only the third known object from a faraway star \u2014 all deemed of natural origin \u2014 to venture into the sun\u2019s turf.<\/p>\n

Several NASA spacecraft observed the celestial iceball as it swung past Mars last October, venturing within 19 million miles of the red planet. The closest it ever got to Earth was in December at a whopping 167 million miles away.<\/p>\n

SETI said it conducted more than seven hours of observations in July soon after the comet was discovered, searching through a wide range of radio signals. The team identified nearly 74 million narrow-band radio signals.<\/p>\n

After accounting for human interference or signals matching the object\u2019s movement, only slightly more than 200 signals remained, all of which \u201ctraced back to technology on the surface of the Earth or our own Earth-orbiting satellites,\u201d according to SETI.<\/p>\n

Results were published in the Astronomical Journal.<\/p>\n

These results \u201cshow how realistic it is to detect a signal with the technology we have today,\u201d co-author Valeria Garcia Lopez of Furman University said a statement. \u201cThat is why it is important to keep searching for technosignatures, even from objects we might not expect to have signals.\u201d<\/p>\n

SETI\u2019s Sofia Sheikh, the lead author, and her team pointed out that NASA\u2019s Voyager spacecraft will one day become extraterrestrial objects in neighboring star systems. Launched in the 1970s, the twin probes are the most distant spacecraft from Earth, drifting in the space between stars.<\/p>\n

\u201cVoyager and similar probes will eventually become interstellar objects in other stellar systems. We thus know that no extrapolation is needed for the idea of interstellar technological objects, as we have a proof by existence,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

Almost 1 billion miles away now as it makes its way back to interstellar space \u2014 never to return \u2014 the comet is estimated to be within 1,444 feet and 3.5 miles in size. Scientists suspect it could be as old as 11 billion years, twice as old as the sun.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute\u2019s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) \u2014 The group leading the charge in the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":842251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5134],"tags":[39035,344786,5229,4514,1582,276,136365,9469,3549,7264,262966,783,167,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-842250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-3i-atlas","tag-alien-technology","tag-america","tag-astronomy","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-interstellar-comet","tag-radio-signals","tag-san-diego","tag-sandiego","tag-seti-institute","tag-space","tag-space-exploration","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116688158108797567","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/842251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}