The Passer-by, Or the Strange Case of 3I/Atlas. Is it a non-biological lifeform?

The strange behavior of 3I/Atlas since it was first recorded entering the inner Solar System by the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Río Hurtado, Chile, on July 1, 2025 sets it apart from the previous two interstellar objects spotted in our skies over the past decade. Its hyperbolic trajectory coinciding with the path of the planets, its scheduled rendezvous with three of them, its curious front-pointing anti-tail, its strange composition, and the unique polarization of light within its coma, all tell us we are dealing with an object not yet entirely understood by science.

While to some 3I/Atlas is simply a weird-acting exocomet of unusual composition, others, such as Dr Avi Loeb of Harvard University, propose that we should consider the possibility that it is an example of alien technology. Indeed, the various anomalies identified in connection with 3I/Atlas place it at four on Avi’s newly rolled-out Loeb Scale where zero is a natural comet and ten is an unquestionable alien spacecraft of potential danger to life on Earth (with 1I/’Oumuamua, the first interstellar visitor from 2017 being at four on the Loeb Scale, and 2I/Borisov, the second interstellar from 2019, being at zero on the scale). As of October 2025, Loeb estimates a 30-40% chance that 3I/Atlas may not be entirely natural, based on eight anomalies.

Is 3I/Atlas simply a weird exo-comet of purely natural origin, or is Avi Loeb right to insist that we consider it as potential alien tech? Either answer could be correct, although it should be pointed out that there is a third option. What if 3I/Atlas is what might be described as a half and half, in other words a natural comet that is also a non-biological lifeform?

Such a view is supported by the concept of panpsychism, the philosophical idea that everything in the universe including stars and planets has its own consciousness. Panpsychism echoes ancient philosophies, such as Plato’s anima mundi (world soul) or Indigenous animism, where rocks, rivers, and stars possess spirit. Can this list also include comets such as 3I/Atlas? In prehistoric times comets were seen as the tails of supernatural tricksters in the guise of a fox or wolf. Generally, their presence in the skies was deemed an omen of ill luck, and even of impending doom. In ancient Mesopotamia, comets were ‘arrows of the gods’ portending war (e.g., Babylonian tablets). Chinese records linked them to emperors’ fates, while Mayan codices saw them as chaotic forces disrupting cosmic order - paralleling 3I/Atlas’s ‘trickster’ anomalies.

A deep image of interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS captured by the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on Gemini South at Cerro Pachón in Chile. (International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/Shadow the Scientist/CC BY 4.0)

Strange Anomalies

Among the strange anomalies reported in connection with 3I/Atlas is the fact that it entered the inner Solar System on a low retrograde path within 5 degrees of the orbital plane. This is the flat, disk-like path taken by the planets as they revolve around the Sun. A very specific trajectory of this nature allows 3I/Atlas to make close passes of three planets - Mars, Venus, and Jupiter - an extraordinary achievement which if planned would have required precision timing.

Another anomaly concerns 3I/Atlas’s forward-pointing anti-tail. For the first three months of observation (July through September 2025), this strange attribute of the comet’s coma was seen instead of a more conventional tail. This is produced when solar wind ionizes the gas escaping (or outgassing) from the comet’s nucleus during sublimation, a process whereby ice, sandy rock, and dust are made to escape from a comet’s nucleus.

Due to the directional flow of the solar wind, much of the dust grains released from the object’s surface comes from its front end. The larger ones will congregate there due to the fact that they are too big to be pushed back by solar radiation. The smaller ones are ionized (see below) and pushed away from the sun to create a more conventional tail. However, in the case of 3I/Atlas all that was observed prior to its disappearance behind the Sun in mid-October 2025 was an anti-tail. No substantial trailing tail was seen until September, suggesting that the chemical composition of the object’s nucleus is highly irregular. Recent images from October 2025 show the anti-tail has now transitioned into a more conventional tail, with a newly detected jet of gas and dust pointing toward the Sun.

Hit by the Sun

Adding still further to the mystery of 3I/Atlas is the fact that on September 24/25, 2025 the object was struck by a coronal mass ejection (CME), an intense burst of plasma and accompanying magnetic fields, travelling at supersonic speeds. This had been ejected by the Sun days earlier during an unusual round of solar storms that included the emission of massive solar flares.

Instead, however, of causing perturbations within 3I/Atlas’s coma, it simply absorbed these powerful energies and magnetic fields and continued its journey, unaffected.

This violent act by the Sun almost seemed purposeful. One might even speculate it targeted 3I/Atlas deliberately, either to push it away or, more incredibly, to provide it with a source of power.

3I/ATLAS (Pictured) is expected to make its closest approach to Earth on December 19, 2025. (© NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt (UCLA) J. De Pasquale (STScl)

How might we better understand this strange incident?

Sustaining a journey through the cosmos, which began perhaps billions of years ago, would, on occasions, require some kind of external stimulus to ensure a constant linear momentum. In the case of 3I/Atlas, its incredible speed has been estimated to be in the range of 210,000 km/h (130,000 mph).

Is it possible that exo-comets can replenish their energy by entering star systems on a hyperbolic trajectory at extremely high speed to ensure an encounter with its host star? Can that host star respond by sending out a CME to meet the incoming object?

The importance of what happened when the CME hit 3I/Atlas does require some context. First, it is important to remember that the closer a comet gets to the Sun the more solar wind and radiation is going to make dust and gas escape from the comet’s nucleus. Such extreme conditions cause the separation of atoms into positive ions and negative ions (free electrons) in a process known as ionization, which in turn produces a strong plasma environment that surrounds the nucleus with a powerful magnetic field (a comet’s rear tail is also made of ionized gas).

A comet’s coma can generate a gyroscopic stability that helps further stabilize both its integrity and its rotation, which in 3I/Atlas’s case is calculated to be spinning at a rate of one revolution every 16.16 (+/- 0.01) hours.

The manner a CME affects a comet depends on whether or not it has gyroscopic stability. If it doesn’t then it could seriously destabilize the coma, while at the same time interrupting its angular momentum and even separating it from its ion tail. This could also lead to a disruption in its mass and velocity resulting in changes to its linear momentum. A comet displaying gyroscopic stability, on the other hand, while being temporarily compressed by a CME will likely alter its dynamics quite dramatically. How exactly though remains unclear.

If 3I/Atlas is a sentient being, then it would appear to have perfected a way of generating a very powerful, plasma-based coma with gyroscopic tendencies that helps stabilize its magnetic field making it more resistant to the effects of solar wind and radiation. This enables it to more safely approach stars and draw energy from them in a manner that might be compared to an electric vehicle recharging at a charging station, which in the case of 3I/Atlas happened to be the Sun.

Is there something going on between these two celestial bodies—some kind of mutual cooperation like two entangled beings working together as a single shared mind? The concept of panpsychism would not object to this supposition, while evidence of quantum entanglement between two different bodies has now been shown to exist not only in the microcosmic quantum world, but also in the macrocosmic world, in other words the physical world in which we live.

3I/ATLAS is widely thought to be a comet, but scientists like Professor Avi Loeb maintain that unusual clues point to the object being a spacecraft.

Exploring the Coma

What, then, do we know about the chemical composition of 3I/Atlas’s coma? What has been noted is large quantities water escaping from its surface, something now known to have been occurring long before it came under the direct influence of solar wind and radiation.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) detected that the coma of 3I/Atlas contains large amounts of carbon dioxide. This was also the finding of SPHEREx - short for “Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer” - which found that the ratio between CO2 and water (H2O) in the coma was in the range of 8:1, which is highly unusual. More recent data indicates the coma is composed of ~87% CO2, ~9% CO, and only ~4% H2O.

The Power of Nickel

Adding to the unusual nature of the coma is the fact that Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile detected a high nickel-to-iron ratio in the comet’s plume. The presence of nickel in this manner is odd as it is not normally found without iron. The two are typically created together in dying stars and expelled into the interstellar medium during supernova events. Both metals are the principal components of planetary cores such as our own, as well as asteroids and comets, and also most meteorites. Recent detections of glowing nickel vapor at unexpectedly cold temperatures add to the intrigue.

On Earth, nickel is found on its own only after being separated from iron using manufacturing processes. It is, of course, the main component of Nickel-Cadmium batteries due to its highly conductive nature. Chemical reactions taking place inside the battery produce a constant flow of electrons (that is, electricity) providing constant voltage during its useful life.

With an estimated size of up to 5-11 kilometers (3-7 miles) and a proposed mass of around 33 billion tones, 3I/Atlas’s heavy nickel-based nucleus likely produces a gravitational field strong enough to stabilize its plasma-based coma and surrounding magnetic field.

The Properties of Plasma

Important to the stabilization of 3I/Atlas is the fact that one of the suspected components of its nucleus is nickel tetracarbonyl (Ni(CO)4). Its interaction with plasma will result in this highly volatile and extremely toxic liquid decomposing to form pure nickel or nickel-containing compounds.

Nickel, carbon dioxide, and cyanide, which has also been detected in the coma of 3I/Atlas, are all known components in the generation of plasma fields.

In the laboratory, plasma fields and plasmoids (plasma constructs held together by self-generated magnetic fields) have been known to display what can only be described as sentience. This unique characteristic of plasma was first noted in the 1960s by American scientist and theoretical physicist David Bohm FRS (1917-1992), who worked extensively with plasma in the laboratory. He theorized that once a plasma environment had been established a “proto-intelligence” would emerge from a deeper level of existence to occupy this unique environment for the period of its existence. Once the plasma ceases to exist (that is, when the positive ions and negative ions, or electrons, slow down enough to return to their original state) the proto-intelligence returns to the Implicate Order.

If Bohm’s findings are correct then a similar intelligence could very well manifest within 3I/Atlas’s own plasma field making it into a lifeform in its own right.

So despite outwardly appearing as simply a weird-acting exocomet, 3I/Atlas could in fact be an individualized consciousness, a lifeform in its own right, brought into manifestation due to the creation of the plasma coma as the object enters the inner part of a star system.

Such intelligences would presumably go dormant during a comet’s immensely long journeys between stars, either by assuming a state of stasis within its icy core or by returning to Bohm’s proposed Implicate Order prior to reanimation when entering another star system.

Alien Life, But Not As We Know It

People naturally assume that extraterrestrial intelligences, if they exist, will for the most part be anthropomorphic in nature. In other words, they will possess human-like bodies and, despite being highly advanced, will have evolved in a similar manner to humanity. In addition to this, extraterrestrial biological entities would, most likely, have developed civilizations like ours and have the ability to travel between star systems in suitably advanced spaceships.

These are elegant ideas that may well have some truth to them. What they fail to do, however, is address the possibility that life out there in the universe could be wholly unlike anything we have ever even contemplated, never mind encountered before.

Our views on cosmic life must be expanded to embrace new ideas, especially now as we consider the composition and actions of interstellar visitors. These will be reported with growing frequency as long range telescopes both on the ground and in the skies become more able to detect the presence of such cosmic objects passing through the inner Solar System.

The Quantum Realm

If 3I/Atlas eventually breaks up its own individual consciousness would, perhaps, reintegrate with Bohm’s Implicate Order, a realm that his long-time colleague and occasionally collaborator, the British physicist and professor emeritus of the University of London, Basil Hiley, referred to as the “pre-space.”

In physics today, this realm is more commonly referred to as the quantum field, although there seems little question that ancient cultures and indigenous peoples knew it under an assortment of names including the cosmic ocean or the primeval void. In Hinduism and also in Buddhism, for instance, it is known as the Ākāśa, while in Taoism the undifferentiated state from which all things emerge is known as the Wuji. Similar to the Norse Ginnungagap or Aboriginal Dreamtime, where intelligent forces shape reality from chaos. Quantum entanglement may underlie shamanic ‘non-local’ visions or Egyptian akh (spirit) concepts, suggesting timeless interconnectedness.

In some ancient religions, this primordial void was occupied by intelligent beings whose actions bring into manifestation the material universe. This might include the Ogdoad, the eight primordial beings, of ancient Egypt, and the Tahitian god Ta’aroa (Hawaiian Kanaloa), a supreme being in the form of an octopus who dwelt inside a dark void before bringing into manifestation the physical universe.

It is through this non-local realm beyond physical manifestation that quantum entanglement is thought to occur. We are not talking about single twinned particles here, but instead vast networks of entangled particles forming quantum networks through which all thought and consciousness can be conveyed. Quantum entanglement is probably the answer to everything from telepathy and mind over matter.

Such ideas, which remain unproven, can perhaps be linked with 3I/Atlas’s own suspected consciousness, along with its apparent synergetic relationship with the sun and the seemingly intelligent manner it has passed through the Solar System.

Casual Passer-by or Purposeful Fly-by?

The question then becomes, if 3I/Atlas really is a very ancient cosmic being, then what is it doing in this Solar System? Does it have a purpose? Or is this just a random visitation without any kind of profound meaning to humanity?

If 3I/Atlas could be proved to be a sentient being (and that’s a big ask), then here are my musings.

On October 3, 2025 3I/Atlas came within 0.19 astronomical units (AU), that’s one-fifth of the distance between Earth and the Sun (about 29 million kilometers or 18 million miles), of the Martian surface, that’s one fifth of the distance between Earth and the Sun. As this happened, NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover was training its cameras in the direction of the object’s fly by.

When we think of the Red Planet, we naturally default to the deep philosophical question of whether or not life once existed on Mars. This profound question was potentially addressed in September 2025 when it was announced that whilst exploring Mars’s Jezero Crater the previous year NASA’s Perseverance Rover came across what are being described as “leopard spots” in a rock nicknamed Cheyava Falls. An onboard analysis of their composition revealed the presence of chemical compounds consistent with possible microbial life, including minerals like vivianite and greigite.

In other words, there really was, and perhaps still could be, life on Mars.

One of my favorite films is “Star Trek – First Contact.” In it extraterrestrial visitors in the form of the Vulcans land on Earth in order to reveal their existence to humanity for the first time. Why did they do this?

The answer is that humanity had now successfully developed and used a warp drive, meaning that we now had the capacity for faster than light travel. It was the distinctive signature of the warp drive that had alerted the Vulcans to humanity’s advanced stage in technical development, leading them to decide that we were ready to learn about life in other parts of the galaxy.

Could something similar be going on in the wake of the potential confirmation of the existence of life on Mars? Is this why 3I/Atlas made a close pass of the Red Planet, and why this weird exocomet displays so many weird characteristics?

Sceptics might argue that 3I/Atlas’s long journey was always destined to pass through the Solar System, so the discovery of life on Mars has nothing to do with the object’s close pass of the Red Planet. However, quantum entanglement occurs outside of normal space-time, and so is timeless, meaning that the past, present, and perhaps even the future in some capacity, can exist as one within Bohm’s Implicate Order. Everything could be synchronous and interconnected without the interference of time constraints.

3I/Atlas appears to be a passer-by on an incredible journey that began billions of years ago somewhere in the direction of the midplane section of the Milky Way galaxy (this being in the direction of the constellation of Sagittarius). It was in this same direction, on August 14, 1977, that Ohio State University’s Big Ear telescope received the famous Wow! Signal. This was a powerful burst of radio transmission lasting up to 72 seconds that was received on a frequency corresponding to that of hydrogen (1420.405 MHZ), the most abundant element in the universe. If any extraterrestrial source was going to try and broadcast a signal it would be on this so-called hydrogen line, which even to this day is set aside for this purpose.

Despite many attempts to debunk it as natural in origin, the Wow! Signal remains unexplained, although Avi Loeb’s recent proposal that it might well have originated from 3I/Atlas, whose trajectory suggests that at the time it was within about 9 degrees of where the signal originated in the constellation of Sagittarius, is an intriguing, albeit unprovable, possibility.

Scan of a color copy of the original computer printout, taken several years after the 1977 arrival of the Wow! signal. Source: Big Ear Radio Observatory and North American AstroPhysical Observatory (NAAPO)/ Public Domain

Can we really imagine 3I/Atlas as not simply a weird-acting exocomet, but as a stellar object that is on the one hand natural and on the other a lifeform displaying intelligent, pre-planned actions? The many strange characteristics reported in connection with 3I/Atlas suggest that we should not dismiss these ideas if we want to better understand the true nature of these remarkable interstellar visitors that are now being recorded passing through our cosmic neighborhood with more and more frequency (three in the last decade).

As for 3I/Atlas, it seems certain that until it passes out of range of our best telescopes it will continue to reveal weird characteristics that can only add further weight to the conclusion that it is not quite what we thought it was when first detected back in July 2025. As observations continue toward perihelion on October 29, 2025, more data may resolve these puzzles.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Richard Ward for his own insights into this fascinating topic. Thanks also to Adam Crowl and Yvan Cartwright for their comments and suggestions.

By Andrew Collins

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