The plot of the movie Independence Day could soon become reality—as early as this November.
According to Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, a 20-kilometer-wide unidentified space object exhibits some alien-like attributes.
Even further, a paper co-authored by Loeb last month concluded that if the object were an alien vessel with “malign” intentions, then the consequences could be “dire for humanity.”
Loeb and his colleagues at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have written two papers about the object, which was first detected by a NASA-funded telescope in Chile on July 1.
On Thursday morning, Loeb joined CNN This Morning to discuss what NASA has labelled 3I/ATLAS.
The agency has identified the object as an “interstellar comet” on its website and said that it “poses no threat to Earth,” but Loeb cautioned against dismissing some of the object’s extraordinary characteristics.
“The brightness of the object implies a diameter of 20 kilometers. There’s not enough rocky material in interstellar space to deliver such a giant object,” Loeb said.
“It takes 10,000 years for that much mass to arrive to the inner part of the solar system.”
Another factor that the scientist pointed to that distinguishes 3I/Atlas from other interstellar objects (of which only two others have ever been detected) is its trajectory through the solar system.
“The trajectory of this object is very finely tuned. It lies in the plane of the orbits of the planets around the sun, to within five degrees. The chances of that to happen is one in 500.”
He went on to say that the chances of the object’s path past Jupiter, Mars, and Venus being random were in the range of one in 20,000.
Most remarkably, Loeb said that the glow emanating from the object is not befitting that of a comet.
“Usually, for comets you see a trailing tail behind the object. Here, the glow from behind the Hubble Space Telescope image is actually in front of the object.”
“We’ve never seen such a thing!” Loeb said.
The Harvard astronomer isn’t the only one who thinks the object is worth keeping an eye on.
I’m urging NASA to extend the Juno mission to study interstellar object 31/ATLAS. Thank you Avi Loeb for your continued dedication to exploring our universe. We must seize this opportunity for groundbreaking discovery. pic.twitter.com/50zQg8B6Lv
— Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (@RepLuna) August 1, 2025
Last week, Republican Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna wrote NASA Administrator Sean Duffy to suggest that he investigate the nature of 3I/ATLAS using the agency’s Juno spacecraft.
Juno is currently orbiting Jupiter, the planet that 3I/ATLAS will come closest to. Loeb calculated in a paper published last week that adding extra fuel to the spacecraft would allow Juno to execute a “fly-by” and study the nature of the object more closely than any Earth-bound telescope.
It’s unclear if Luna’s request will go anywhere, but Loeb suggested on CNN that such a maneuver would help collect data that can help answer the million-dollar question: Are there other life forms out there?
“Why should we assume that we are the only one in our cosmic neighborhood?” he asked, as he advocated for further study of the object.
“We should just check by looking at data.”
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