I’ve been following Avi Loeb’s fascinating writings (and interviews) on 3I/ATLAS, the third interstellar object that has entered our solar system. But I’m increasingly concerned about the tone of Loeb’s public commentary, which is self-promoting and unusually dismissive of other scientists. He often casts himself as a modern Galileo – upright, embattled, and ultimately vindicated – facing an entrenched scientific “establishment.” In my view, this narrative risks damaging public trust in the scientific process, because it frames scientific disagreement as evidence of herd mentality or jealousy, rather than as the normal operation of skepticism, peer review, and methodological caution.
Loeb’s writing also shows a strong, recurring bias toward the alien-technology hypothesis. For example, he writes: “Its arrival time was fine-tuned to bring it within tens of millions of kilometers from Mars, Venus and Jupiter…” But “was fine-tuned” presupposes an agent doing the fine-tuning – language that steers the reader toward an artificial craft interpretation before the evidence warrants it.
In fact, Loeb has been suggesting that 3I/ATLAS might be artificial since late July 2025, and by late October he was already invoking a “technological engine” to explain its apparent non-gravitational acceleration. Since early to mid-November, he has gone further, proposing that the observed, tightly collimated jets — including the sunward “anti-tail” — could be thrusters mounted on the surface of a spacecraft. That’s a bold and specific claim.
But here’s the context: 3I/ATLAS was discovered by the ATLAS survey in Río Hurtado, Chile, on July 1, 2025. (The IAU still has not formally granted it the 3I designation, because its official orbit solution technically still allows a bound trajectory, though the scientific consensus is that it is interstellar.) Since July there have been many independent observations from multiple observatories. So far, none of these observations show any deviation from an inertial, hyperbolic path.
Which brings me to my non-astrophysicist question:
If this is a spacecraft using thrusters strong enough to generate the observed collimated jets, shouldn’t it have significantly changed course by now?