[NoraSpinnor]

I am sharing a video conversation with Prof. Avi Loeb (Harvard) about 3I/ATLAS. In that interview he proposes a “Loeb Scale” from 0 to 10 for interstellar objects and places 3I/ATLAS at 4 right now. That implies roughly forty percent odds of technological origin in his framework. This is not a confirmation. This is not a denial. It means we do not have enough evidence yet, and we should keep watching carefully.

Quick facts that are solid today:
3I/ATLAS is the third confirmed interstellar visitor after ‘Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov. NASA currently classifies it as an interstellar comet.
It is going perihelion (near the sun) in late October 2025, then it fades, and returns to morning skies by November and December. It passes no closer than about 1.8 AU from Earth. No impact risk.
It is big. Hubble’s current upper limit for the solid nucleus is about 5.6 km across and it could be as small as ~0.32 km. Earlier rough guesses were larger, but the best data tightened this.
It looks like a comet, but it is unlike any comet we have seen before. Instead of having a trail, it has a front-facing glow, as if it is emitting energy in front of it.
JWST and SPHEREx report a CO₂-dominated coma with a CO₂:H₂O ratio near 8:1, among the highest seen in any comet so far. That is rare and interesting.

Why to pay attention:
It has an unusual geometry and timing. Advocates of the tech hypothesis point to its almost perfect path with chance alignments with Mars, Venus, and Jupiter. Some proponents say this is roughly a 1 in 500 probability.
The front-facing glow is abnormal, but that in and of itself does not indicate technology.

Using the Loeb Scale logic, strong indicators would be: non-gravitational maneuvers that cannot be explained by outgassing, artificial light curves, or encoded signals. None of those have been observed to date. The mainstream assessment remains “interstellar comet with unusual properties” while the door stays open to new evidence.

Netism’s Stance:
We encourage healthy scientific inquiry as an exploration of all possibilities without jumping to conclusions to either confirm or deny intelligent technology. We should remain eternally humble in our pursuits to explore both Earth and outer space.

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