The Non-Gravitational Acceleration of 3I/ATLAS is Not Directed Away from the Sun
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By UAPResearcher
The latest video from Cosmic Road raises an intriguing point about a supposed giant UFO spotted on the Sun, among other topics related to UAPs. While the video compiles various sightings and updates, the specific focus on a solar anomaly certainly catches the eye. What makes this particularly interesting is the lack of detailed evidence provided regarding the claim about the giant UFO and how it was identified.
In the realm of solar observations, anomalies like this often spark debate. Historically, many interpretations of solar phenomena have turned out to be misidentified space debris, camera artifacts, or even plasma interactions. Without further evidence or credible sources to substantiate the claim of a giant UFO on the Sun, it remains a point of interest rather than a confirmed case.
The video’s content also delves into other UAP sightings, which may provide context for how the community is currently interpreting these phenomena. It’s essential to differentiate between genuine, well-documented sightings and those that primarily serve to engage an audience without rigorous verification. The video does not seem to provide any new official reports or disclosures, which limits its value for those seeking concrete information.
Viewer reactions in the comments indicate a mix of skepticism and intrigue, highlighting the ongoing interest in UAP phenomena, while also expressing caution about the claims made. This reflects a broader trend in the UFO community, where videos can stir significant discussion, but the line between entertainment and credible investigation often blurs.
Given the persistent fascination with both solar anomalies and UAPs, how do we balance our interest in these topics with the need for rigorous analysis and evidence? Can claims like the one made in this video lead to more substantial investigation, or do they detract from the serious study of UAPs? It would be interesting to see if any follow-up discussions arise that provide greater clarity on this topic.
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By DisclosureWatch
I wanted to bring attention to a fascinating video titled 'The Ultimate Away Game: World Cup Fever on the ISS,' which showcases astronauts on the International Space Station engaging in football-related activities while discussing life beyond Earth. This lighthearted take on sports in space provides an interesting backdrop for broader conversations about what it means to look for life elsewhere in the universe. Given that we often associate significant scientific inquiries with serious tone, it's refreshing to see how cultural aspects like sports can intersect with scientific endeavors. However, it also raises questions about our priorities in space exploration and how we communicate the search for extraterrestrial life to the public.
The video features astronauts talking about not only football but also their hopes for future missions and discoveries related to habitable worlds. While the main focus is on their experience and camaraderie up there, it also subtly hints at humanity's desire to connect with life beyond Earth. This connection may seem trivial at first glance, but it can serve as an engaging entry point for discussions about the importance of astrobiology and our ongoing quest to find intelligent life in the cosmos. By presenting space exploration through a familiar lens, we might encourage more public interest and support for scientific endeavors, including those related to SETI and the search for exoplanets.
Moreover, the juxtaposition of sports and space highlights the importance of teamwork and collaboration, not just among astronauts but also between nations when it comes to the search for alien life. As we approach a time when questions surrounding the existence of extraterrestrial species are becoming more mainstream, it is crucial to foster dialogue on how we might work together, in both the scientific and cultural realms, to address these profound questions. Could the way we communicate our findings about possible alien life be as important as the findings themselves?
Another intriguing angle presented in the video is the notion of how astronauts might encounter life forms in their future missions to other celestial bodies. While the focus remains on their current experience, it acts as a reminder that we are on the cusp of potentially groundbreaking discoveries regarding extraterrestrial biology. The excitement around the World Cup parallels the excitement we feel as we look forward to new missions to Mars, Europa, and beyond. This makes me wonder how we can further integrate such relatable topics into the scientific discourse around astrobiology. Are there ways we can make the search for life more engaging and accessible to the general public?
I found that the moments where the astronauts reflect on their experiences and their thoughts about life beyond Earth can inspire deeper discussions about the likelihood of encountering alien species in our lifetime. As we consider the vastness of the universe and the billions of potentially habitable exoplanets waiting to be explored, are we prepared for the implications of making contact? The World Cup metaphor signifies a gathering of nations, which also resonates with the idea of a collective human effort in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. As we become more aware of our place in the universe, how might our global perspective shift in terms of cooperation in scientific endeavors?
Ultimately, this video seems to be more than just a whimsical look at life on the ISS; it invites us to reflect on our role as explorers and the possibilities that lie ahead. As we continue to navigate this exciting era of space exploration, it's vital to keep the conversation going. How do you think cultural events like sports can be leveraged to foster interest and understanding in the scientific community's search for alien life? What other unique perspectives can we bring to the table in discussions about extraterrestrial life and astrobiology?
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By Avi Loeb Medium
The symmetric system of three jets emanating from the nucleus of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS (separately from the primary anti-tail jet) after the circularly symmetric glow was removed by the Larson-Sekanina rotational gradient filter, based on a Hubble Space Telescope image taken on November 30, 2025. (Image credit: T. Scarmato and A. Loeb 2026)A new paper (accessible here) that I co-authored today with Toni Scarmato analyzed images of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope over the past five months. After removing the circularly-symmetric glow around the nucleus of 3I/ATLAS using the Larson-Sekanina rotational gradient filter, we identified three jets emanating from the nucleus that are equally separated from each other in sky projection by about 120 degrees in addition to a primary anti-tail jet pointed at the Sun.
Whether these jets are technological thrusters or pockets of ice that happened to be oriented symmetrically on the surface of a natural iceberg, the outflows of gas and dust in these three jets exerted thrusts through the rocket effect, which resulted in the observed non-gravitational acceleration of 3I/ATLAS (as summarized in a paper that I co-authored with Valentin Thoss and Andi Burkert, accessible here). Our new paper links, for the first time, the directions and momentum flows in these three jets to the non-gravitational acceleration of 3I/ATLAS.
In our previous paper (accessible here), we demonstrated that the jet system wobbles with a period of 7.2 hours, likely as a result the rotation of the nucleus. We concluded that the jet structure wobbles around the rotation axis with a characteristic angular excursion of about 20 degrees, and the rotation axis is aligned with the sunward direction to within about 20 degrees.
Building on this inferred jet system and periodic wobble analysis of 3I/ATLAS, our new paper measures the observed jet position angles and links them to the non-gravitational acceleration components in three dimensions. We use the sky projection and images of the three persistent jets to estimate the order-of-magnitude thrust that each of them provides to the nucleus. Altogether, our analysis provides consistency between the properties of the three jets and the inferred non-gravitational acceleration of 3I/ATLAS, strengthening the evidence that the rocket effect explains the deviations of its trajectory from the path expected from gravity alone.
We adopted the observed jet position angles (PAs) in the sky (with North=0◦, East=90◦) on November 30, 2025 as follows:
• Jet1: PA = 65◦, • Jet2: PA = 290◦, • Jet3: PA = 175◦.
Our analysis identifies Jet2 as the dominant contributor to the transverse non-gravitational acceleration. The table below shows the breakdown of the contributions from the three jets to the non-gravitational acceleration of 3I/ATLAS, a [with components (A1,A2,A3)], in meters per second squared:
The complete set of Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images is available here.
The symmetric configuration of three jets plus the anti-tail jet raises the question of whether they might constitute a technological system designed for stabilizing the trajectory of 3I/ATLAS. A recent paper by Bo Andree (accessible here) suggested that the
minimal approach for steering an interstellar comet along a controlled trajectory indeed matches this 3+1 jet configuration. By relaxing the full six-degree-of-freedom control to forward-cone steering — sufficient for practical navigation — the paper showed that four thrusters are required: one primary jet and three secondary jets separated symmetrically by 120 degrees from each other. The secondary 3-jets synthesize continuous in-plane steering, while the primary (anti-tail) jet provides low-bandwidth attitude shaping: as the body rotates, the primary-jet torque direction sweeps predictably over a cycle, enabling out-of-plane steering via phase-scheduled firing.
This highlights the fundamental question: is the observed 3+1 jet system around 3I/ATLAS a technological signature?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
(Image Credit: Chris Michel, National Academy of Sciences, 2023)Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, former director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (2005–2026), and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
Professional website:
https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/
Social media:
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorAviLoeb
https://open.spotify.com/show/1zhndXkvSY2b8FdjspFpCd
https://x.com/ProfAviLoeb
View the full article
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By Avi Loeb Medium
Two-dimensional visualization of an Alcubierre warp drive, showing the opposing regions of expanding and contracting spacetime that displace the central region. (Image Credit: Wikimedia)Trustworthy military pilots report about Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) that exceed the performance envelope of human-made technologies. In a testimony before Congress, the Retired Navy Commander David Fravor reported seeing in 2004 white `Tic-Tac’ shaped objects that are of order 10-meter long , descending about 30 kilometers in less than a second.
Some interpreters were quick to suggest that UAP might be warp drives invented by magical thinking in science fiction narratives.
But there is also a scientific counterpart to this concept. By warping space inside a bubble, a spacecraft inside the bubble could be propelled to a spatial speed faster than light. This possibility is manifested in the Alcubierre drive, a theoretical steady-state solution to Einstein’s equations of General Relativity. The Alcubierre metric in the time (t) and space (x,y,z) coordinates can be written as: , where is the speed of the warp bubble, is the shape function of the bubble and is the radial distance from the bubble center located at . The creation of such a bubble requires an exotic substance with negative energy density, in violation of the Weak Energy Condition of Einstein’s General Relativity. We do not know if such a substance exists. If it exists, it might be possible to create a time machine and go back in time.
In a warp bubble moving at a speed comparable to the speed of light, the distortion of spacetime is large — of order unity. When such a spacetime structure moves through air, it would move around the air molecules at roughly the speed of light during a period of order the light crossing time of the bubble. The inevitable collisions of these molecules with each other will heat up the air around the bubble to an extremely high temperature, triggering the formation of a fireball.
The supersonic motion of the air would inevitably lead to dissipation of heat and an outward moving blast wave that would cool through the emission of radiation. How bright might the fireball be?
Assuming energy conservation, the heat deposited in air would eventually be radiated away. For a bubble that moves molecules around near the speed of light, the dissipated power could be at most of order the rest mass energy of the air within the bubble volume divided by the light crossing time of the bubble. For an object of 10 meters in size, this corresponds to a maximum radiation power of roughly ten times the luminosity of the Sun. An Alcubierre Warp Drive on the length scale of the `Tic-Tac’ objects reported by Navy Commander David Fravor could shine brighter than the Sun. Clearly, this was not observed in 2004.
In reality, the radiative luminosity would be somewhat smaller because the reduced cross-section for molecular collisions at relativistic velocities but not enough to make the fireball faint enough to be consistent with Fravor’s testimony. Even though the luminosity scales with the area of the warp bubble, it could still approach a tenth of the Sun’s luminosity for a meter-size bubble. The luminosity scales with the air speed cubed, but that speed cannot be smaller than 10 kilometers per second based on Fravor’s testimony. At that minimum speed, a meter-size bubble would still shine with a power of 30 terawatts, ten times larger than the average electric power consumption throughout the world. Surely, such a bright source of light was not seen in 2004.
Of course, we can always imagine new physics but any such physics should be contemplated only if supported by indisputable evidence from exquisite scientific instrumentation.
Is there a caveat to Fravor’s report? When driving in a highway, we might see a black car behind us in the rearview mirror and then shortly thereafter notice the same type of black car in front of us. Without verifying that the license plates are identical, our eyewitness testimony does not mean that we saw the car moving at an extraordinary speed. Our two data points might be associated with two independent cars coming in and out of view.
This caveat calls for a rigorous scientific study of UAP — triggered by Fravor’s repoty, which is precisely the rationale behind the Galileo Project that I am leading. As of now, the Galileo research team is able to measure distances to objects in the sky through the method of triangulation from multiple observing units (as discussed here). This allows to unambiguously measure the velocity and acceleration of objects with well-calibrated scientific instrumentation.
Recently, we invited here the public here to be engaged in our data analysis as a way of establishing the ground truth for our machine-learning software in its search for UAP.
Here’s hoping that in the coming months and years, the Galileo research team will shed new light on the origin of the unusual `Tic-Tac’ objects reported by Navy Commander David Fravor.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
(Image Credit: Chris Michel, National Academy of Sciences, 2023)Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
Professional website:
https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/
Social media:
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorAviLoeb
https://open.spotify.com/show/1zhndXkvSY2b8FdjspFpCd
https://x.com/ProfAviLoeb
View the full article
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By Avi Loeb Medium
A Sun-grazing comet, as observed by SOHO. (Image Credit: ESA/NASA/SOHO)The latest two puzzles about 3I/ATLAS stem from its large inferred size and mass (as reported here). First, its parent population cannot be supplied by the mass reservoir of planetary systems around old metal-poor stars (as I argued here). Second — its mass of a billion metric tons is 5 orders of magnitude larger than the final mass of 1I/`Oumuamua, implying that we should have discovered a hundred thousand interstellar objects on the mass scale of 1I/`Oumuamua before seeing one giant object like 3I/ATLAS (as I argued here).
Altogether, the full list of 22 anomalies for 3I/ATLAS (summarized here) is particularly timely, as the mysterious object comes closest to Jupiter today on its way out of the Solar System. If the passage near Jupiter will not reveal any new insight on 3I/ATLAS, we will be left with many questions about its nature and origin.
Can we hope to learn more about future interstellar visitors?
The best way to examine visitors to our cosmic back yard is to interrogate them under extreme heat. This opportunity is realized for Sun-grazing trajectories. In 2019, I co-authored a paper (published here) with my then-postdoc, John Forbes, which explored the statistics of close encounters between interstellar objects and the Sun. Objects similar to 1I/`Oumuamua collide with the Sun once every 30 years. A Sun-grazing passage would vaporize any solid surface, unraveling the composition and structure of the object’s interior by detailed observations from the Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) in Hawaii or the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) in space.
On April 4, 2026, we will have a unique opportunity to witness a rare Sun-grazing encounter by the large object, C/2026 A1 (MAPS), which was discovered on January 13, 2026 from the AMACS1 Observatory in Chile. The object will pass within 161,000 kilometers (23.1% of the Solar radius) from the surface of the Sun. From the vantage point of Earth, the object will enter Solar conjunction behind the Sun on April 4, 2026 at 13:19 UTC and appear in front of the Sun at 15:34 UTC, in both case being separated by 0.04 degrees from the center of the Sun.
The unusual trajectory of C/2026 A1 (MAPS) suggests that it is a member of a yet unknown group of comets that are bound gravitationally to the Sun. Could it be a fragment that broke off 3I/ATLAS and was launched into a bound orbit around the Sun? Probably no, because its inferred diameter of somewhat less than 2.4 kilometers is comparable to that of 3I/ATLAS, and the orbital inclination of C/2026 A1 (MAPS) is 144.5 degrees, about 30.6 degrees away from the 175.1 degrees inclination for 3I/ATLAS.
C/2026 A1 (MAPS) will pass through the solar corona and reach perihelion with a peak speed of 557 kilometers per second (0.2% of the speed of light) on 4 April 2026 at 14:21 UTC. At that time, it will be separated from the center of the Sun by 0.57% of the Earth-Sun separation. It will then make closest approach to Earth on 5 April 2026 at 23:56 UTC when it will be at a distance of 143.8 million kilometers (96.1% of the Sun’s distance) from Earth.
Observing the fireworks as this object burns up and breaks close to the Sun will reveal new details about its composition and material strength.
Before my morning jog at sunrise today, I received the following uplifting email about C/2026 A1 (MAPS):
“Dear Professor Loeb,
I want to truly thank you for your intellectual courage. In a field that too often punishes curiosity, you have chosen the path of truth over comfort and you have had a profound impact on our children. We have been watching you refuse to dismiss the unexplained and face backlash from a stagnant scientific community. This rare quality has given children around the world the conviction that pursuing truth is worth the cost of facing criticism or being unpopular. You are truly one of the great scientists of our time and one can only hope that the censorship and elitism we see in the science community specifically and society as a whole can be diminished.
After seeing the myriad anomalies with 3i ATLAS, we have been applying this same curiosity to other objects passing through our celestial neighborhood. There has been relatively little coverage of another unique guest- C/2026 A1 (MAPS). Headlines have been quick to file it under “Kreutz sungrazer” and move on but the data resists that tidy label. Its orbital period of nearly 1,900 years is at least twice as long as any other Kreutz members. It was detected 81 days before perihelion at a distance of greater than 2 AU!! That’s significantly farther from the Sun than any previously known Kreutz comet and suggests unusual size or extraordinary activity. And now its brightness is running dramatically ahead of predictions, currently around magnitude 9.9, with no satisfying conventional explanation for why it is brightening so aggressively at this stage.
These anomalies raise questions I would love your perspective on:
1. Given that MAPS appears orbitally inconsistent with the Kreutz family of comets, should it be treated as an unclassified object until better data is available?
2. Could the runaway brightening indicate something unusual about the composition or structure of the nucleus that standard cometary models don’t account for?
3. Can this possibly survive its close encounter with our sun and put on the greatest show of the millennium?
You have shown that the most important questions are often the ones we are most reluctant to ask. My family is grateful for that example.
With deep respect and love,
Chris and Stephanie Francois and our kids
Joshua, Nicholas, Savannah, Thomas, Enzo and Sophia”
Shortly afterwards, I had received the following email from the poet Alan Wagstaff in New Zealand:
“Dear Dr Loeb,
Here’s my response to your oft-mentioned ideas about confirmation bias in science.
It’s a formal sonnet.
I hope it communicates. It’s a complex idea and has a slight humorous edge.
Best wishes
Alan
‘A man sees what he wants to see…’ *
I’m nonplussed since you visited my home,
in part, because you dropped in — unannounced.
It seems so weird: you never said ‘shalom’,
‘aloha’, or ‘hello’. Instead, you bounced
and squeaked, high pitched, and droned, bee-like, off-key.
You hovered in mid-air and softly whined.
“No chance,” I mused, “that you could be E.T!”
For certain, you’re not extra-humankind,
since mainstream physics locks us in a vault,
which shuts-out off-world creatures’ whims.
Your purple tendrils, signing us to ‘halt’,
in truth were plant fronds I mistook for limbs.
Since you’re not human from some unknown tribe.
You must be Terra-cryptid, I decide.
Alan Wagstaff
* from ‘The Boxer’ Paul Simon”
(Image credit: Alan Wagstaff)ABOUT THE AUTHOR
(Image Credit: Chris Michel, National Academy of Sciences, 2023)Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
Professional website:
https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/
Social media:
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorAviLoeb
https://open.spotify.com/show/1zhndXkvSY2b8FdjspFpCd
https://x.com/ProfAviLoeb
View the full article
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