Tag: ufo

Interstellar object 3I/ATLAS updates: Will we intercept it?

Will we send a spacecraft to intercept 3I/ATLAS?

Scientists first spotted 3I/ATLAS, the 3rd interstellar visitor ever identified in our solar system, in early July 2025. And since then, one question has been asked countless times: will we send out a spacecraft to take a closer look? On August 21, EarthSky’s Will Triggs spoke to University of Edinburgh astronomer Colin Snodgrass to find out the answer. Plus, Colin talked about ESA’s Comet Interceptor, an upcoming spacecraft that will be primed to intercept future interstellar objects. Watch in the player above, or on YouTube.

3I/ATLAS shrinks again

On August 7, 2025, NASA shared a new image of 3I/ATLAS (above) – the world’s 3rd known interstellar object – as well as provided an updated estimate of the size of the object’s nucleus, or core. Shortly after the object was first identified on July 1, 2025, 3I/ATLAS was estimated to have a diameter of about 20 km (12 miles). Then in late July – using data from the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile – the size estimate dropped to 10 km (6 miles). The latest analysis uses data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. It reduces the estimated diameter of 3I/ATLAS’s nucleus still further, to 5.6 km (3.5 miles).

And, the astronomers using Hubble data said, the object could be even smaller, as small as 320 meters (1,050 feet) across!

Plus, as you can see from the image, 3I/ ATLAS is looking more and more comet-like as it approaches our sun. It’s currently between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

The two previous known interstellar objects are 1I/ ‘Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov. ‘Oumuamua’s size is thought to be about 200 meters across at its widest (you’ll recall it has an elongated shape). And Borisov is thought to be less than a kilometer across.

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The Cost of Disclosure: How Intimidation Keeps UFO Witnesses Quiet

The first thing, Mike Herrera says, is the pressure. 

It arrives as a feeling before it becomes a fact: the sense that people asking the wrong questions are being watched, leaned on, or shut down.

Politicians, congressional staffers, and whistleblowers are facing threats and intimidation from Intelligence Community operatives and government contractors as they investigate covert Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) programs, according to the Marine veteran, who says he has briefed the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) and the Senate’s Intelligence and Armed Services Committees.

“Absolutely – it happens quite a bit,” Herrera told Liberation Times.

“Many feel the heat [investigating UAP allegations from whistleblowers and witnesses], and I personally know some, though I won’t name them. It’s a very common trend among staffers and even politicians to be threatened or intimidated in an effort to make them back off.”

The intimidation, he says, is meant to be unmistakable – more than whispers in corridors, closer to a performance of power. 

“They use surveillance to make people feel uncomfortable – helicopters are the big one. They’ll fly over someone’s residence or circle them, just as a reminder: ‘You’re on our radar.’ It’s happened to me personally, and it’s happened to many whistleblowers I know. Even staffers and some politicians have experienced it, over and over again.”

From pressure tactics, Herrera moves to structural allegations: efforts inside Congress that steer inquiries away from sensitive lanes, especially around alleged crash retrievals and reverse engineering. 

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Harvard Astrophysicist Fans Alien Speculation After Detecting Odd Energy Signature on Interstellar Object

Astronomers detected the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS on July 1, 2025, using the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System telescope in Chile.

This marks the third confirmed interstellar visitor to our solar system, following ‘Oumuamua in 2017 and Borisov in 2019. NASA has classified it as a comet, estimating its size at 10 to 24 kilometers in diameter.

Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb has analyzed images showing an unusual glow at the object’s front rather than a trailing tail typical of comets.

He argues this brightness cannot result from reflected sunlight or standard outgassing of volatiles like water or carbon dioxide.

Loeb’s calculations indicate the luminosity reaches gigawatt levels, which he attributes to a possible internal power source.

Loeb has ruled out natural explanations such as a primordial black hole, which would produce negligible energy, or frictional heating from interstellar medium due to insufficient density.

He also dismisses a supernova radioactive fragment as statistically improbable. Instead, he proposes nuclear power as the most feasible compact source for the observed energy output.

In a paper co-authored with Adam Hibberd and Adam Crowl, Loeb suggests 3I/ATLAS could be an artificial spacecraft, potentially accumulating interstellar dust that emits forward under nuclear propulsion.

The object travels at approximately 210,000 kilometers per hour, the fastest recorded for a solar system visitor.

Spectral data show no cometary gases, and some observations lack a clear tail, though image smearing from motion complicates analysis.

The object’s trajectory originates from the Milky Way’s thick disk, possibly making it up to 7 billion years old, older than our solar system.

It follows a retrograde orbit aligned within 5 degrees of the ecliptic plane, passing close to Venus at 0.65 astronomical units, Mars at 0.19 AU, and Jupiter at 0.36 AU. Loeb calculates the probability of such alignments at 0.005 percent for random arrivals.

Loeb notes the perihelion on October 29, 2025, occurs opposite Earth relative to the Sun, at about 130 million miles away, potentially shielding it from detailed Earth-based observation.

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Mysterious Object Hurtling Toward Us From Beyond Solar System Appears to Be Emitting Its Own Light, Scientists Find

Last month, astronomers made an exciting discovery, observing an interstellar object — only the third ever observed — hurtling toward the center of the solar system.

The object, dubbed 3I/ATLAS, has caught the attention of Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who has a long track record of making controversial predictions about previous interstellar objects being relics from an extraterrestrial civilization.

While there’s been a growing consensus among astronomers that the latest object is a comet, Loeb has continued to entertain the idea that it may have been sent to us by an intelligent species from outside of the solar system — and he’s far from backing down.

In a blog post over the weekend, Loeb pointed to observations by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, which showed a “glow of light, likely from a coma, ahead of the motion of 3I/ATLAS towards the Sun.”

A coma is the hazy and luminous cloud that surrounds the nucleus of a comet.

However, there’s “no evidence for a bright cometary tail in the opposite direction,” he wrote, with scientists suggesting it was evidence that dust was evaporating from the object’s Sun-facing side.

The observations led Loeb and his colleagues to an intriguing, albeit far-fetched possibility: is the mysterious space object generating “its own light?”

After deliberations with his colleague and Harvard astrophysicist Eric Keto, Loeb suggested that the “simplest interpretation” of 3I/ATLAS’ observed “steep brightness profile” is that its nucleus “produces most of the light.”

That would also mean that its actual size is much smaller than currently thought, roughly in line with the size of the first two interstellar objects we’ve observed, ‘Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov.

The Harvard astronomer suggested two possibilities: either 3I/ATLAS is naturally emitting radiation because its a “rare fragment from the core of a nearby supernova that is rich in radioactive material” — or it’s a “spacecraft powered by nuclear energy, and the dust emitted from its frontal surface might be from dirt that accumulated on its surface during its interstellar travel.”

Loeb deemed the former explanation “highly unlikely,” and the latter as requiring “better evidence to be viable.”

Loeb previously argued that the object’s unusual trajectory — which includes suspiciously close flybys of both Earth and Jupiter — and its lack of a visible tail both undermine the theory that it’s a comet.

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Who Owns the Unknown? When private hands hold technology not of this Earth, who decides what happens next? The UAPDA has an answer.

Imagine this: A private landowner discovers something buried deep beneath the surface of their property. It’s not oil, gold, or a rare fossil, but something entirely foreign. A piece of machinery, perhaps. Advanced. Intact. Entirely unexplainable. It appears to be manufactured, but not by any known earthly process. It does not match the signatures of Russian, Chinese, or even American technology. It is exotic, inexplicable, and possibly not of human origin at all.

What happens next? Does the landowner get to keep it? Auction it to the highest bidder? Lease it to a defense contractor or a foreign state? Does the government step in, invoke national security, and confiscate the technology of unknown origin, without due process or compensation, never to be seen again?

This scenario is no mere thought experiment. The U.S. Senate has now, for the third time, introduced the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act (UAPDA), legislation designed to pierce through 80 years of secrecy, disinformation, and scientific suppression surrounding the subject of UAP, or UFOs. One of its most vital and controversial provisions is its explicit affirmation of the applicability of the right of eminent domain.

Opponents of the UAPDA have zeroed in on this provision. They argue it threatens property rights and creates a dangerous precedent for federal overreach. But these objections collapse under scrutiny. In truth, the eminent domain clause is the linchpin that makes lawful UAP disclosure possible. Without it, we risk continuing a shadow system of secret seizures, constitutional violations, and scientific stagnation.

Let’s be clear: eminent domain is not a novel or unchecked power of our local, state, and federal governments. Instead, it is a deeply rooted legal principle in American constitutional law. What the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment provides is not the denial of that right, but a granting of that right and its regulation through due process, and which goes on to assert one of the required aspects of due process is the taking of property solely for public use with just compensation. The UAPDA need not define “just compensation.” The legal requirement for fair compensation in any lawful taking under eminent domain is already firmly established in precedent and practice. Importantly, the exercise of eminent domain can be contested in court, providing a clear check on government power, unlike covert seizures under the guise of national security, which offer no such judicial review or recourse. The UAPDA merely renders a specific process already governed by over a century of constitutional law.

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World should draft UFO policy, says professor eyeing strange comet

The Havard University professor who has raised questions about an interstellar object known as 3I/ATLAS — namely, that it may be some sort of alien tech — has some advice for the international community: Figure out a plan on dealing with UFOs.

“I believe that we need an international organization that will make policy decisions about such an object,” theoretical physicist Avi Loeb told “Banfield” on Friday. “We are worried about existential threats from artificial intelligence, from global climate change, from an asteroid impact, but we never discuss alien technology.”

In scientific circles, 3I/ATLAS is thought to be a comet. But Loeb said the object from outside our solar system seems to be unusually large, doesn’t appear to have a typical comet’s tail and has a puzzling trajectory.

“The response has to depend on its properties and its intent — what is it doing as it comes closer to us?” Loeb said. “And it’s just like having a visitor in your back yard. You can’t decide on the policy for all visitors. It really depends on the intent of the visitor, and it’s just next door.”

NASA says 3I/ATLAS is not on a collision course with Earth.

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Mysterious ‘orbs’ demand scientific study

President Trump interviewed Air Force pilots who were utterly baffled by the objects. They seem to chase Navy fighter jets and have been captured on radar and video. The Pentagon’s UFO analysis office is perplexed by them.

What is behind the enigmatic “orbs” reported by countless credible observers since at least World War II?

The scientific community must abandon the nearly century-long anti-scientific stigma surrounding UFOs — which the Pentagon likes to call “unidentified anomalous phenomena” — and investigate this enduring mystery. This is especially so since the Pentagon now admits openly that it is baffled by “several dozen” “true anomalies” and “really peculiar” UFO incidents, including some involving unknown “orbs.”

On July 24, the Senate confirmed former Air Force fighter pilot Matthew Lohmeier as the under secretary of the Air Force, the department’s second-highest civilian position. While in high school, Lohmeier had a remarkable UFO encounter.

According to Lohmeier, a “ball of light” descended upon him and a friend as they were in the wilderness outside of Tucson, Ariz. The object came so close that Lohmeier recalls that “it seemed to be buzzing with life, but it wasn’t man-made.”

“It was very well-organized, very spherical,” Lohmeier said, “and it seemed to be very conscious of the two of us that were sitting there in the Arizona mountains, like it was observing us … there was a level of interest from the orb to us.” Frightened, the two ran to their car. The object “zipped up and disappeared in the sky.”

Lohmeier is not the only Air Force fighter pilot left baffled by such an object. In a September appearance on Fox News, Trump stated that he interviewed several Air Force pilots who encountered spherical objects performing extraordinary maneuvers. According to Trump, the pilots told him, “All I know, sir, there was a round object that was going four times faster than my F-22.”

“Four or five guys [that] I’ve interviewed, solid people, great pilots for the U.S. Air Force,” Trump continued, have “seen things that they cannot explain, so there’s something.” Trump also told podcaster Joe Rogan that the pilots observed objects “like a round ball, but it wasn’t a comet or a meteor.”

Timothy Phillips, the former deputy director of the Department of Defense’s UFO analysis office, stated in June that the Pentagon is perplexed by “fiery orbs.”

Such phenomena have been reported since at least World War II. “Balls of Fire Stalk U.S. Fighters” read the headline of a frontpage Jan. 2, 1945, New York Times article describing the mysterious “foo fighters” that toyed with American pilots in the European and Pacific theaters.

The late Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), as a wartime transport pilot in Asia, encountered such an object, which conducted extraordinary maneuvers around his plane. The experience led him to enthusiastically support then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) establishment of a secret Pentagon UFO program in 2008. A 2017 New York Times story revealing that program spurred a sweeping congressional investigation into the UFO phenomenon. This led to the introduction of extraordinary legislation and the establishment of the Pentagon’s analysis office.

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US vice president ‘obsessed’ with UFOs

US Vice President J.D. Vance has revealed he has been “obsessed” with UFOs and hopes to thoroughly investigate the phenomenon in the nearest future.

Vance made the admission during an episode of the Ruthless Podcast which aired on Friday, where he proclaimed his fascination with the mysterious flying objects.

“Like, I’m obsessed with the whole UFO thing. ‘What’s actually going on?’ ‘What were those videos all about?’ ‘What’s actually happening?’” he said. “I haven’t gotten to the bottom of it yet, but we’re only six months in; we’ve been very busy.”

The US VP pledged to spend the Congressional recess in August “in part” to try and study the matter and “dive to the bottom of the whole UFO thing from last year.” While Vance did not elaborate, he apparently referred to identified drone sightings in New Jersey late last year. Some of the flying objects were reportedly as large as a sedan.

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The Vault Files: The 1965 Kecksburg, Pennsylvania Crash

The Kecksburg UFO incident of December 9, 1965 remains one of the most intriguing unresolved cases of a mysterious object falling from the sky. Often dubbed “Pennsylvania’s Roswell,” it involved reports of a fiery fireball streaking over several U.S. states and Canada, a crash in the woods near the village of Kecksburg, and an alleged military recovery of an unknown object[1]. Over the decades, the incident has been the subject of intense speculation – from meteor to secret Cold War satellite to extraterrestrial craft – and persistent efforts by investigators to unearth official records. This deep dive examines all angles of the Kecksburg case, drawing on eyewitness accounts, media reports, and released government documents (many obtained via The Black Vault’s FOIA requests) to present a balanced, evidence-backed picture of what we know.

On the early evening of December 9, 1965, just as dusk fell, a brilliant fireball was observed by citizens across at least six U.S. states and Ontario, Canada[2]. Witnesses from Detroit, Michigan to Windsor, Ontario saw a flaming object streak through the sky, dropping hot metal debris over parts of Ohio and Michigan and even igniting some grass fires[2]. Sonic booms rattled the Pittsburgh area as the object passed overhead[2]. In the rural community of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania (about 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh), residents reported hearing a “thump” or impact and seeing blue wisps of smoke rising from the woods[3]. Something appeared to have crashed into a wooded ravine nearby[3].

Authorities responded swiftly. Pennsylvania State Police and local volunteer firefighters were among the first on scene, but they were soon joined by U.S. military personnel. The area was quickly sealed off, with state troopers establishing a perimeter and ordering civilians back. According to later accounts, approximately 25 U.S. Army soldiers (reportedly from a nearby base) and a few U.S. Air Force members arrived to scour a 75-acre patch of woods for the object[4]. Roadblocks were set up, and some curious onlookers who tried to sneak in were turned away at gunpoint by armed military guards[4] – an unusually strong response for what many assumed was a simple meteorite fall.

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‘Possibly hostile’ alien threat detected in unknown interstellar object, a shocking new study claims

A mysterious intergalactic object could potentially be a “hostile” alien spacecraft that’s slated to attack our planet in November, according to a controversial new study by a small group of scientists.

“The consequences, should the hypothesis turn out to be correct, could potentially be dire for humanity,” the researchers wrote in the inflammatory paper, which was published July 16 to the preprint server arXiv, South West News Service reported.

Dubbed 3I/ATLAS, the interstellar entity was discovered on July 1, rocketing toward the sun at more than 130,000 mph, Live Science reported. Less than 24 hours later, it was confirmed to be an interstellar object with initial observations suggesting that it could be a comet that measures up to 15 miles in diameter — larger than Manhattan.

However, in the new paper, the trio of researchers suggested that it might be a piece of extraterrestrial spy technology in disguise.

One of the researchers, Avi Loeb — a prominent Harvard astrophysicist known for linking extraterrestrial objects to alien life — previously made waves after floating the theory that 2017 interstellar object ʻOumuamua could be an artificial recon probe sent by an alien civilization, based on its odd shape and acceleration.

In this study, which he collaborated on with Adam Hibberd and Adam Crowl of the Initiative for Interstellar Studies in London, Loeb postulated that 3I/ATLAS’s trajectory suggests a similarly alien origin.

The trio felt the object’s speed — which was significantly faster than ʻOumuamua and other objects — and the fact that it entered our solar system from a different angle than its predecessors offer “various benefits to an extraterrestrial intelligence,” Loeb wrote in a blog post.

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