Interstellar object 3I/ATLAS is expected to make its closest pass of the Earth just under a month from now, coming within around 170 million miles of us.
Three months later, it’s expected to get even closer to Jupiter as it continues on its highly eccentric path through the solar system.
And as Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb — who has long championed the theory that 3I/ATLAS could be an alien spacecraft, to the increasing dismay of the mainstream research community — points out on his blog, recent “non-gravitational acceleration” seems to have nudged it toward a fascinating region of Jupiter’s orbit.
Specifically, it’s going to zip right past Jupiter’s Hill radius, the boundary inside which the gas giant can keep an object in its own orbit without it being stolen by the Sun.
In the Earth’s vicinity, Lagrange points L1 and L2 are close to the boundary of our planet’s Hill radius, a perfect place of equilibrium for satellites and other human-made objects, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, to orbit the Sun while using minimal amounts of fuel.
Loeb suggests that if it is indeed an alien spacecraft, 3I/ATLAS could be passing through Jupiter’s Hill radius to “seed” the planet with “technological devices.”
“If we find technological satellites of Jupiter that we did not send, it would imply that Jupiter is of interest to an extraterrestrial civilization,” Loeb wrote.
But not everybody’s on board, including NASA. In light of considerable evidence that the mysterious visitor is a comet made of ice and dust, NASA associate administrator Amit Kshatriya preemptively shut down Loeb’s theorizing during a recent announcement, angering him in the process.
During its closest approach to the Sun last month, 3I/ATLAS got a push in the form of “non-gravitational acceleration.” While a more conventional explanation would suggest the Sun’s radiation heated the object up, causing it to lose more mass and thereby accelerate, Loeb suggested at the time that it could “be the technological signature of an internal engine.”
Intriguingly, that extra push will allow it to get within around 53 million miles of Jupiter on March 16, which also happens to be within just 160,000 miles of the planet’s Hill radius.
“In other words, the non-gravitational acceleration introduced a small course correction of exactly the magnitude needed to bring the minimum distance of 3I/ATLAS from Jupiter to the value of Jupiter’s Hill radius,” Loeb wrote. “3I/ATLAS would have missed the edge of the Hill sphere otherwise.”
Therefore, Loeb suggested that 3I/ATLAS’ “level of non-gravitational acceleration was finely tuned” with the help of thrusters to meet the “radius of Jupiter’s gravitational influence.”
The astronomer reiterated that NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016, should have a closer look at 3I/ATLAS in the spring.
Loeb also argued that scientists should remain humble and not jump to conclusions by arguing that the only possibility is that 3I/ATLAS is a natural comet. For one, if we were to find “technological satellites” in the orbit of our solar system’s largest planet — and not around Earth — it could serve as a “blow to our ego, akin to attending a party where nobody is interested in dancing with us.”
“Perhaps this is because the human species arrived late to the party — only a few million years ago, whereas Jupiter — the biggest planet in the Solar system, was visible to the senders of 3I/ATLAS when the mission was launched billions of years ago,” he concluded.
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