THE MYSTERIOUS OBJECT MOVING THROUGH OUR SOLAR SYSTEM
WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON WITH 3I/ATLAS?
DICK RUSSELL
NOV 6

Since it was discovered on July 1, 2025 - only the third confirmed interstellar object ever detected - the massive object labeled 31/ATLAS has been the topic of intense observation and speculation. Comet experts cheered that’s what it was, after the Hubble Space Telescope released a high-resolution image several weeks after its sighting.

But as the renowned Harvard astronomer Dr. Avi Loeb soon noted, this “neglected the fact that the image revealed an anti-tail pointing towards the Sun. Realizing this is as shocking as photographing an animal in your backyard which your family members identify as a common street cat, while the image shows a tail coming out of the animal’s forehead.”

3I/ATLAS is observed to be relatively small but incredibly heavy, rich in metals like nickel and cobalt. And NASA has just announced detecting a water ice signature around it, a spectral fingerprint of hydroxyl (OH) gas that forms when sunlight breaks apart water molecules.

Although the major media have largely ignored its advent, Dr. Loeb has continued to track and write about 3I/ATLAS on an almost daily basis. And he’s found a number of anomalies that indicate it’s too large to be an asteroid, and does things that are at the least highly unusual if not unprecedented. “The timing and path of its trajectory allowed close approaches to Mars, Venus and Jupiter - an unexpectedly efficient route,” Loeb has written. At what’s called perihelion, its recent closest approach to the Sun, “it appeared bluer than the Sun and exhibited a sudden brightening behavior unlike typical comets.” Its motion at perihelion also showed “measurable non-gravitational acceleration,” reinforcing the fact that this is no frozen relic.

Here’s what else is weird: Pictures taken by three cameras in perfect positions to get the clearest images have been taken at three different locations - and they’ve yet to be released. NASA’s Psyche spacecraft sailed past 3IATLAS in early September, known for photographing “opportunistic targets.” The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter cameras captured images on October 2-3 and China’s Tianwen-1 orbiter followed suit on the 3rd. But zero images from any of these have entered the public domain.

So while many astronomers continue to insist that 3I/ATLAS is of natural origin, not something technological, it makes you wonder what’s being kept from prying eyes. I mean, we now possess scientific instruments that can detect, track and potentially intercept objects like 3I/ATLAS before they disappear into interstellar space. This one is headed our way, calculated to make its closest approach to Earth on December 19, some 167 million miles away.

Yet, for the first time ever, an interstellar object is apparently being monitored by the UN’s International Asteroid Warning Network. Why? One article I read pointed out some curious synchronicities. On October 1, along with other federal agencies NASA announced a partial shutdown, furloughing most of its 18,000 employees “due to a lapse of government funding.” The day before that, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered hundreds of senior military officers to a surprise emergency meeting in Quantico, Virginia. Although “standards” and “woke” military policies were publicly the topic of conversation, the gathering was officially classified.

At the end of October, President Trump gave an interview aboard Air Force One where he brought up sending federal troops to American cities. “People don’t care if we send in our military, if we send in our national guard, if we send in space command,” he said.

The U.S. Space Command, for anyone who doesn’t know, is a new entity responsible for space surveillance and protecting American interests in orbit. The president is, of course, prone to lumping things into one grand stew of possibilities. But bringing up Space Command in the same breath as National Guard city deployments is, as one blogger commented, “like mentioning the Coast Guard for desert patrol.”

Or could Trump’s remark have been more purposeful than fanciful? The following day, he outlined a plan to restart nuclear weapons tests for the first time in more than thirty years. And this followed on the heels of 3I/ATLAS changing color from reddish to blue with consistent gas bursts as it approached perihelion to the Sun. The object wasn’t only reflecting light, it was emitting light - somehow over a nine-day period into the end of October becoming hotter and brighter than our Sun!

For sure, it’s a stretch to connect these various earthbound events to an interstellar visitor, natural or alien. But Shiva Meucci, a historian of theoretical physics who outlined this chronology on the Medium website, added to the mix the sudden surge in the value of gold to $4,000 an ounce. This occurred out of the blue between October 4-7, immediately following 3I/ATLAS’s closest approach to Mars. “Faster than anything in modern history except policy-driven shocks,” Meucci writes.

I think we all sense that something big is indeed approaching. 3I/ATLAS is, at the very least, rewriting what astronomers know about space chemistry and cometary physics. And maybe, as it moves silently through our solar system, its strange behavior portends something else.

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