Astrophysicist Avi Loeb: The object 3I/ATLAS retains a pronounced anti-tail.
Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb has noted a new mysterious property of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS. He wrote about this in his blog on the Medium platform.
3I/ATLAS invaded the Solar System a few months ago and on Friday, December 19, it will pass at a distance of 270 million kilometers from Earth. Most experts consider it an interstellar comet. Avi Loeb does not rule out that the object has an artificial origin and represents a giant alien ship.
Loeb pointed out that 3I/ATLAS retains a pronounced anti-tail — a trail of particles directed toward the Sun. In his opinion, this is unusual, as the object has long passed the point of closest approach to the star. Considering facts from a new study that will be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, the likelihood of such an anti-tail appearing for natural reasons is extremely low.
According to the study, periodic wobbling of the anti-tail of 3I/ATLAS was observed in July and August. This indicates that its base is offset from the poles of the axis of rotation of its core by less than eight degrees. In Loeb's view, this means that the axis of rotation of the object aligns with the direction of its movement, and after passing perihelion, one side is always facing the Sun while the other is always facing away from it.
Among other unusual properties of 3I/ATLAS, Loeb notes that its trajectory lies almost in the same plane as the orbits of the planets around the Sun. Additionally, in July and August 2025, the object developed an anti-tail. For comets, this is not uncommon and is usually explained by an optical illusion that arises due to the changing position of the comet relative to Earth. However, Loeb believes that in the case of 3I/ATLAS, the outflow of material has indeed changed direction.
The astrophysicist suggests that 3I/Atlas is heading toward Jupiter. According to his calculations, after passing the Sun, the object's trajectory changed and now lies within the so-called Hill sphere of that planet. It is at such a distance that a spacecraft would need to be to launch a satellite that should remain in orbit around Jupiter.
Avi Loeb is the principal investigator of the Galileo project, the founding director of the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University, and the director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. In the past, he headed the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University.
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