Breaking Update: Here’s a clear explanation of the latest developments related to Breaking News:3I/ATLAS: Harvard Astrophysicist Avi Loeb Decodes New Radio Data On The Exocomet Bound Towards Jupiter– What Just Happened and why it matters right now.
Ever since the discovery of 3I/ATLAS, on July 01, 2025, the exocomet has never ceased to baffle scientists and stargazers alike with its anomalous properties. Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb has so far documented no less than 15 anomalies in the interstellar interloper that defies cometary physics.
The third-ever interstellar object to traverse through the solar system since 1I/Oumuamua (2017) and 2I/Borisov (2019), flew the closest to Earth recently on December 19. All eyes were glued to the exocomet as it grazed past Earth by 1.79 AU or about 270 million kilometers, too far to terrorize earthlings who were half expecting it to turn out to be an alien spy probe. While for the majority of the observations from around the globe, 3I/ATLAS has shown comet-like features, a few studies don’t bode well with the textbooks. With a lack of close encounters with the comet and a hi-res image, we are relegated to interpret it through spectrography studies. X-ray data helps and so does radio data.
In recently released radio data by the Allen Telescope Array that is based on the observation of 3I/ATLAS on July 2, 2025. Briefing about the same Prof Loeb in his latest blog stated
Within the frequency range of 1–9 GHz, there were nearly 74 million narrowband hits. After mitigating Radio Frequency Interference in the dataset, only about 2 million hits were left. These hits were further filtered by sky localization. The vast majority of them did not coincide with 3I/ATLAS in the sky. The remaining 211 hits were visually inspected in the time-frequency domain and the observers did not find any signals worthy of additional follow-up.
He adds
Accounting for the radial velocity (Doppler) drift of 3I/ATLAS, the upper limit deduced on the isotropic radiated power of 3I/ATLAS is in the range of 10 to 110 Watts within the observed range of radio frequencies.
Prof. Loeb also remarked on the observation made on Dec 19 by the e Green Bank Telescope at 1–12 GHz.
The astrophysicist further cited another paper entitled “Upper Limit on the Non-Gravitational Acceleration and Lower Limits on the Nucleus Mass and Diameter of 3I/ATLAS.”
The latest data on the non-gravitational acceleration of 3I/ATLAS was combined with data on its mass loss rate to conclude that the diameter of its nucleus is of order 1 kilometer. This size estimate confirms the value predicted in my first paper on 3I/ATLAS, published in early July.”
See Also: EXCLUSIVE: Harvard Astrophysicist Avi Loeb On 3I/ATLAS, Aliens, Stranger Things & Indian Food
See Also: 3I/ATLAS: Avi Loeb Hasn’t Dropped Exocomet’s Technological Origin Theory As It Moves To Jupiter; Here’s Why