As if 3I/Atlas couldn't get any weirder! Back in July when
the interstellar interloper was first discovered, there was a strong feeling of
"promissory normality" in the astronomical community. The great hope
for the skeptics was that the more we learned about 3I the more ordinary it
would become. "Relax, chaps! It's just a rock." was a refrain I heard
over and over again from people who were just guessing. They didn't know any
more about the object than the rest of us. "But it
will turn out to be a rock
when
we know more about it!" they insisted. They remind me of the scientists in
the 70's who said near-death experiences would be explained as brain function
in the future
when we know more about
the brain (and we're still waiting for that after half a century, see:
https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2023/06/afterlife-portal.html.).
However, the opposite has happened. The more we learn about 3I the stranger and
stranger it gets; see the background link below. The latest ingredient of
strangeness was dropped into the mix yesterday, but it refers to a study that
has been ongoing for a while, in fact the data was gathered soon after 3I's
discovery. Two Russian researchers, Yuri Medvedev and Sergei Pavlov, have made
the accouchement on The Astronomical Telegram, not to be confused with the
social media app Telegram; as a few dishonest skeppers will no doubt attempt.
This is a very old website, launched in 1997, to serve as a short-notice
publication service for quickly disseminating information on new astronomical
observations. The post reads:
"We
report the results of the analysis of the O-C distribution of positional
observations (Δα, Δδ) for the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS (C/2025 N1) taken
from MPC. A Lomb-Scargle periodogram was constructed based on the O-C values
obtained for the moments when the comet's heliocentric distance became less
than 4 AU. It was found that the (Δα·cosδ)2+Δδ2 values undergo variations with
a statistically significant period of 4 hours. We also constructed a
periodogram for 19 photometric observations obtained between July 4 and 6 from
the paper (they provide a hyperlink). Values with the maximum aperture (m14) was
used. The identified period coincided with the O-C period and is equal to 4
hours." This text might not mean much to you unless you are a trained
astronomer, but there are some resources simplifying it; but not Prof. Avi Loeb
yet, although I'm sure the good professor is onto this one like a dog with a
bone. Source:
https://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=17437.
What this is based on is an observation made at
Cornell
University reporting that 3I/Atlas
was exhibiting some distinctly unusual celestial mechanics. It was undergoing
periodic cycles of motion and brightness. The obvious mundane explanation for
this would be rotation; in fact it was the very extreme levels of brightness
changes indicating rotation that led to Avi claiming that 1I/'Oumuamua might
not be a natural object. The problem is that 3I/Atlas' motion cycle runs about once
every four hours and the brightness cycle every two; why are they not changing
together. The motion alone would be difficult enough to explain, especially if
the object turns out to be at its currently estimated minimum diameter of 5.6
kilometres, or bigger. Yet when you add in this regular pulse of light you get
a genuine anomaly wrapped in an enigma. What's even more interesting is that
this behaviour back in early July appears directly to contradict later
observations that have also been proposed as evidence for a possibly non-human
intelligent origin, see:
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/news-on-3i-atlas-lack-of-non-gravitational-acceleration-implies-an-anomalously-massive-object-7ad320e69cef
and the background link below. So did this early activity change as 3I closed
in on the inner solar system? It looks like it did. If so, why? Nobody knows,
but this feature has certainly never been discovered in any natural object ever
seen in space. It seems unlikely that this is another outgassing effect too
because it is too regular and, dare I say it, controlled. Outgassing acceleration,
as I've detailed in the background, is random and transient, like a loose
firework. We are faced with yet another true riddle; and I wonder what the
answer is. This news raises another issue. Obviously science can be a slow and
methodical process. Very often it is carried out by a large team in many
different institutions who gather evidence and then talk amongst themselves
about what it means. Then they have to arrange their thoughts into a coherent
narrative that makes up a paper. This then has to be edited for publication;
charts and illustrations have to be rendered. As we found out, the first JWST publication
took over a fortnight. This new Russian one has taken over three months. This length
of time could be for perfectly innocent reasons, but my naturally
conspiratorial mind inevitably drifts to the question of why Medvedev and
Pavlov have published now. By now I mean just after 3I/Atlas enters the visual
baffles of the sun. Right now it is totally invisible to terrestrial telescopes
and will remain that way for probably about a month and a half. Did they wait until
3I was out of sight to publish? Maybe they felt nervous about the implications
of their findings and didn't want it launching a major scandal. By coming clean
with 3I in solar conjunction nobody else can confirm or deny what they are
saying for a long time. They have given themselves a breathing space. They
could even be hoping the questions will be forgotten when the scientific news
cycle moves on. I think this give us an insight into the scientific psychology
and culture. Why should two proper scientists, being honest and using the
proper methods, be frightened to theorize that they might have discovered
aliens? The only answer has to be that there is some kind of sociological taboo
related to it, despite all protestations to the contrary, see:
https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/08/skeptics-portal.html.
Obviously there are exceptions who have the courage or foolhardiness to blurt
it out and sod the consequences, like Prof. Loeb, but these are manifestly a
rare breed. I wonder how many of his colleagues secretly agree with Avi, but
they don't want to risk saying so. They want to avoid the aggro he's had to put
up with. Either way, this impasse has an expiry date. 3I will burst out from
behind the sun in mid-November to the gaping eyes of every astronomer on earth.
If it's still acting weird then, or even more so, there will be no way to avoid
facing up to those facts.
See here for
background: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2025/07/interstellar-object-portal.html.
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