3I/Atlas Was 'Aimed' at Our Solar System on Purpose, Avi Loeb Claims

They called it 3I/ATLAS—the third interstellar object ever detected passing through our solar system. It was spotted on July 1 by a relatively small telescope in Chile, but the implications of its brief visit are anything but small. To most astronomers, it is a fascinating, yet natural, phenomenon. But to Harvard theoretical physicist Professor Avi Loeb, it is either an unprecedented cosmic anomaly or something far more unnerving: a piece of equipment that was 'sent' to us on purpose.

Loeb, the former chairman of Harvard's astronomy department, has made a name for himself by taking an aggressively open-minded approach to interstellar visitors. He has paid particularly close attention to 3I/ATLAS since its discovery, suggesting that a handful of peculiarities mean the world's scientific community should not be so quick to label it as just a random rock wandering through space.

Is 3I/ATLAS Really The Size Of Manhattan Island?

The first detail that caught the eye of Loeb and his colleagues was the sheer brightness of the object. A telescope that was not very big was nevertheless able to see the visitor from a huge distance. This led to an immediate conclusion that 3I/ATLAS must be either incredibly reflective or unusually large.

Initial calculations based on the assumption of a solid, rock-like surface suggested a size that defied conventional expectations. If this brightness was coming purely from a solid body, the object could be as large as the entire length of Manhattan Island—far bigger than previous interstellar visitors such as 'Oumuamua.

This size immediately presented a massive question for the scientific community. Loeb outlined two simple possibilities: either the object only looks big because it is surrounded by a thick, reflective cloud of gas and dust (a 'coma') that is obscuring a smaller core, or, terrifyingly, it truly is gargantuan.

If the size is genuine, the mere presence of 3I/ATLAS is statistically improbable. Loeb has pointed out that an object of this magnitude and rarity should only be expected to appear once every 10,000 years. Yet, here it was, only eight years after scientists began actively tracking such visitors. The fact that the third object ever seen from another star system is this colossal—and arrived so quickly—is an anomaly in itself.

The Path Of 3I/ATLAS: Why It Was 'Aimed' At Our System

However, it is the object's trajectory, not just its size, that fuels Loeb's most controversial claims. The path of 3I/ATLAS through our solar system sits unusually close to the plane in which all our planets orbit.

Loeb calculated that this particular type of neat alignment—sitting within a small angular window of the main planetary orbits—would only happen by chance 1 out of 500 times. This low probability suggested a level of precision that is difficult to explain through random gravitational encounters.

It was this alignment data that led Loeb to his most provocative conclusion. He briefly wrote in an early research paper that, because of the statistics, the object 'may have been aimed' towards the inner solar system. The line, however, was deemed too speculative for the journal, and he was told to remove it before publication. Undeterred, he later wrote a separate paper specifically exploring the idea of an intentional trajectory.

To be clear, Loeb is not claiming that this is conclusive proof of an alien agenda. He is simply arguing that science should be driven by unusual patterns, not dogmatic dismissal. Most scientists continue to believe it is a natural comet, however strange, but the combination of its brightness, colossal potential size, and incredibly neat alignment convinces Loeb that we should not ignore the possibility that 3I/ATLAS may have been 'sent' into our cosmic neighbourhood on purpose.