Harvard Prof. Avi Loeb flags new unsettling anomaly in 3I/ATLAS: Is the interstellar visitor releasing devices?

Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb has been tracking 3I/ATLAS, only the third known object from outside our solar system, and what he’s found reads like the setup to a cosmic mystery: the object seems to be heading straight for the very edge of Jupiter’s gravitational domain, as though drawn to the planet by design.

To understand why this is so eerie, it helps to picture Jupiter as a colossal cosmic monarch surrounded by an invisible sphere of influence. This is called the Hill radius, a region where the gas giant’s gravity dominates over the Sun’s. Objects that drift inside this boundary can be captured into gentle, stable positions known as Lagrange points—prime real estate for any device, natural or otherwise, that wants to hang around Jupiter without much energy expenditure.

Loeb calculated Jupiter’s Hill radius for the moment 3I/ATLAS will pass closest to the planet on March 16, 2026. The number comes out to roughly 53.5 million kilometers. NASA’s orbital predictions show 3I/ATLAS will swing by Jupiter at a distance of about 53.445 million kilometers—a match so precise that the difference falls within the expected measurement uncertainty. In simpler terms, the object is on track to skim the exact outer shell of Jupiter’s gravitational sphere almost perfectly.

The trouble is that it wasn’t supposed to.

The predicted path shifted slightly after astronomers observed a subtle push acting on 3I/ATLAS—something not explained by gravity alone. This extra nudge, known as non-gravitational acceleration, is typically caused by gas jets firing off the surface of icy comets as they warm near the Sun. But in this case, the change was so small and so precisely aligned that it effectively “corrected” the object’s course just enough to bring it to the Hill radius. Without this nudge, 3I/ATLAS would have missed that boundary entirely.

Loeb describes the level of precision as statistically rare—akin to hitting a cosmic bullseye from unimaginable distances. And while natural explanations exist, the alignment opens a door to a far stranger possibility: what if something guided the trajectory?

Images captured after perihelion show multiple narrow jets streaming from 3I/ATLAS. If the object were technological—something akin to a drifting probe or even a mothership—these jets could serve as controlled thrusters. A slight maneuver near the Sun, when spacecraft can take advantage of the Sun’s gravitational assist, would be the perfect time to make such a correction. Coincidentally, the object was hidden behind the Sun during this period, leaving Earth’s telescopes blind to its activity.

The eerie part doesn’t end there. This precise alignment with Jupiter’s Hill radius joins a growing list of a dozen other anomalies associated with 3I/ATLAS. They include its unusual chemical makeup, its bizarre jets, its extreme brightness changes, its alignment with planetary orbits, and even its arrival direction matching the famous “Wow!” radio signal region. None of these individually proves anything artificial—but together, they form an increasingly unsettling pattern of improbabilities.

If 3I/ATLAS were releasing devices as it passes Jupiter, we might one day detect unfamiliar objects orbiting the giant planet—objects not launched by us. Missions like Juno could potentially spot newcomers. If nothing appears, the mystery remains intriguing but benign. If something does, it would imply that Jupiter, not Earth, is what truly interests whoever—or whatever—sent this traveler.

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