We’ve studiously avoided any mention of our latest interstellar visitor, 3I/Atlas, on these pages, mainly because of all the hoopla in the popular press about how Avi Loeb thinks it’s aliens, because of course he does. And we’re not saying it’s aliens either, mainly because we’d never be lucky enough to be alive during an actual alien invasion — life just hasn’t historically been that kind to us. So chances are overwhelming that 3I/Atlas is just a comet, but man, it’s doing its level best to look like it’s not, which means it’s time to brave the slings and arrows and wade into this subject.
The number of oddities surrounding 3I/Atlas just keeps growing, from its weird Sun-directed particle stream to its extreme speed, not to mention a trajectory through the solar system that puts it just a fraction of an astronomical unit from two of the three planets within the “Goldilocks Zone” of our star — ignore the fact that at an estimated seven billion years old, 3I/Atlas likely would have started its interstellar journey well before our solar system had even started forming. Still, it’s the trajectory that intrigues us, especially the fact that it’s coming in at a very shallow along to the ecliptic, and seems like it will cross that imaginary plane almost exactly when it makes its closest approach to the Sun on October 29, which just coincidentally happens to be at the very moment Earth is exactly on the opposite side of our star. We’ll be as far as possible from the action on that date, with the comet conveniently lost in the glare of the Sun. Yes, there’s talk of re-tasking some of our spacecraft around Mars or in the Jovian system to take a peek when 3I/Atlas passes through their neighborhoods, but those are complicated affairs that show no sign of bearing fruit in the short time left before the comet heads back out into the Deep Dark. Too bad; we’d really love an up-close and personal look at this thing.
