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A Manual for Tracing Alien Tech in Interstellar Objects

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A paragraph from a poem titled “Other Castaways” by Alan Wagstaff. (Image credit: Alan Wagstaff)

Comet and asteroid experts were trained on a data set that includes icebergs and rocks. But they did not read the memo that over the past fifty years humans produced another type of space objects, technological in origin.

The farthest human-made object is Voyager 1, launched in 1977 and currently at a distance of about a light day from Earth. Within a billion years, Voyager 1 will be on the opposite side of the Milky-Way galaxy relative to the Sun, as calculated here.

The simplest assumption is that similar circumstances lead to similar outcomes. Astrobiologists argue that terrestrial life started from a soup of chemicals in liquid water. Given that there are likely billions of Earth-Sun analogs in the Milky-Way galaxy, it is arrogant to argue that NASA is the only space agency in our galaxy or that Elon Musk is the most accomplished space entrepreneur since the Big Bang, during 13.8 billion years of cosmic history. The star formation history of the Milky-Way, as reconstructed here from the age distribution of white dwarf remnants, implies that most sun-like stars formed billions of years before the Sun. The fact that we are late relative to others on the cosmic scene implies that Voyager 1 analogs could have traveled from the other side of the Milky-Way to our vicinity by now. Alien spacecraft more advanced than we used in the 1970s propelled to a speed faster than 30 kilometers per second, could have made it to our backyard even earlier.

It therefore makes sense to examine interstellar objects for anomalies that might flag a technological origin. Natural rocks are likely far more abundant in interstellar space, but technological gadgets might be concentrated in the habitable zone of the Sun similarly to flies clustering around a lamppost.

How will we know if an interstellar object is technological? It is most straightforward to identify alien tech based on a high-resolution image, but it could also be deduced from the detection of artificial lights (as discussed here), non-gravitational maneuvers that cannot be explained through natural cometary outgassing (as discussed here) or components that were designed for particular technological functions. It is also important to allow for imposters which behave like Trojan Horses (as discussed here) while displaying the outside appearance of a natural rock or an iceberg which conceals a technological interior.

Obtaining a high-resolution image of interstellar objects does not necessarily require coming close to them, but could also be accomplished by an astronomical optical interferometer on the Moon, larger than a football field (as proposed here).

The search for technological objects is qualitatively different from the search for electromagnetic signals, the hallmark of traditional SETI. Whereas the latter resembles waiting for a phone call, the former focuses on searching our backyard for a tennis ball or checking our mailbox for a package. In contrast to training our telescopes on distant sources, the study of interstellar objects focuses on the vicinity of Earth. If successful in finding technological products, this search will answer Enrico Fermi’s question: “where is everybody?”, with: “right here.” Whereas electromagnetic signals propagate at the speed of light and escape out to the distance of the Andromeda galaxy after crossing Earth when the first humans emerged a few million years ago, technological artifacts are bound by gravity to the Milky Way and accumulate over time in interstellar space like plastics in our oceans, as long as their speed does not exceed 500 kilometers per second — the local escape speed from the Milky-Way.

The discovery of interstellar objects ushers in a new frontier in astrobiology. Even if we restrict our attention to only comets that originated naturally in distant planetary systems, these icebergs may carry materials with the building blocks of life. Indeed, the SPHEREx Space Observatory revealed organic molecules in the gas plume around 3I/ATLAS, raising the fundamental question of whether it carries life, as I discussed here. Delivery of a material sample from an interstellar object, as done by the OSIRIS-Rex mission to the solar-system asteroid Bennu (and described here), would require an ambitious intercept mission in the future.

Material samples could also be collected from interstellar objects that collide with Earth and appear as meteors. If the surge in meteor activity on Earth in recent months (as described here) was associated with debris from the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS when the Earth came closest to its path, then analysis of related meteorites could unravel the composition of 3I/ATLAS. Expeditions to interstellar meteor sites, like the one I led in June 2023 (as described here), could accomplish the same task. My research team is currently analyzing isotopes from the expedition material to test whether it has an extrasolar origin, and we hope to conduct a future expedition to other interstellar meteor sites in the future (as described here).

The discovery of technological signatures in the strewn fields of interstellar meteors would not only reveal the existence of life, but also extraterrestrial intelligence. Alien intelligence is far more exciting than artificial intelligence (AI), because it is based on a much larger training dataset. Among many anomalies (listed here), 3I/ATLAS entered the Solar System within 5 degrees of the ecliptic plane and offered an unprecedented opportunity for intercept missions, which humanity missed. We should seize similar opportunities with future interstellar objects, expected to be discovered by the NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory in the southern sky and the Argus array in the northern sky (as discussed here).

Technological markers are initially flagged by scientists as anomalies, because they deviate from the expected behavior of rocks or icebergs. On September 17, 2020, the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii discovered an object, labeled 2020 SO, which did not show cometary activity but exhibited a non-gravitational acceleration away from the Sun as a result of the reflection of sunlight from its surface. This behavior resembled the features of the interstellar object 1I\`Oumuamua, discovered by the same telescope three years earlier (as reported here). The spectrum of 2020 SO indicated that it is made of stainless steel, clinging the case that it is the upper stage of the Surveyor 2 mission launched by NASA in 1966. On January 2, 2025 the Minor Planet Center catalogued a near-Earth asteroid, only to realize that it follows the path of the Tesla Roadster car launched by SpaceX as a dummy payload on the Falcon Heavy rocket in 2018. These were identified as human-made objects because we know of what humanity launched to space over the years. But objects with similar anomalies that were launched by extraterrestrial civilizations will be catalogued by astronomers as rocks of a type never seen before. The Pavlovian response to catalog anomalous interstellar objects as comets or asteroids should be resisted. Only astronomers whose training dataset includes technological space objects, will allow themselves to flag anomalies associated with technological interstellar objects.

So far, 3 interstellar objects were discovered through telescopes and at least 2 interstellar meteors were discovered by U.S. government sensors (as reported here and here). Some of these object, like 1I/`Oumuamua (as discussed here) and 3I/ATLAS (as discussed here), display multiple puzzling anomalies that could be of technological origin. Better future data could trace technological fingerprints that are beyond any reasonable doubt, but it will be recognized only if astronomers will not shove anomalies under the carpet of traditional thinking.

We should be motivated to collect such data by raw curiosity, and attend to anomalies in order to gain new knowledge. Humility is a prerequisite to discovering that we are not at the top of the cosmic food chain. The foundation of science is the humility to learn, not the arrogance of expertise.

Of course, many extraterrestrial artifacts may have passed near Earth throughout its 4.54-billion-year history and some of these encounters might have been documented in old texts. But science requires quantitative data from well-calibrated instruments.

Astronomy departments are usually smaller in size than political science or economics departments. This is because astronomical events usually do not have major implications for society. If a star explodes a billion light years away, it does not affect our daily life. However, a visitor to our backyard could have a major impact on humanity’s future, especially if it is a technological mothership that releases mini-probes towards Earth.

Following the discovery 3I/ATLAS on July 1, 2025, I defined the so-called Loeb Classification Scale of interstellar objects, where a rank of 0 corresponds to a natural object and a rank of 10 implies alien technology that poses a major threat to humanity (as quantified here, here and here). Subsequently, 3I/ATLAS was discussed as a possible black swan event within governments. In particular, the CIA did not deny having records on it (as discussed here) and Vladimir Putin mentioned it in a press conference reviewing 2025 (as discussed here).

Unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) are the focus of 46 videos requested from the Pentagon by congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna last week (as discussed here). It would be fascinating to review the data that these videos entail.

Disclosure of alien probes from an extraterrestrial technological origin could disturb financial markets and upset the sense of security promised by governments to their citizens (as discussed here). It could also fundamentally shake our world model about our place in the Universe. Cosmology textbooks (like mine here and here) describe the cosmos as a lonely place, filled with inanimate matter that follows deterministically the laws of physics. However, having siblings in our family of intelligent civilizations could change our perspective about humanity’s central role on the cosmic scheme — even more so than the Copernican revolution did. The implications would undoubtedly spill over to spiritual and religious beliefs.

It might be as easy to find the closest aliens as it is to find the farthest galaxies, if we only put our mind to the task.

My sentiment inspired a poem, titled “Other Castaways” and posted here, that I received before my morning jog at sunrise today from a brilliant poet in New Zealand, Alan Wagstaff. Check it out.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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(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

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