“Because of You!”: 3I/ATLAS Inspires Kids to Be Scientists
At the opening of an interview today for a widely-read Danish newspaper, I noted that I will be giving a lecture next week at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. A century ago, the physicist Niels Bohr played a central role in discovering Quantum Mechanics, which is now the foundation of our most advanced technologies. No expert in physics of the 19th Century expected Quantum Mechanics to be discovered and contemporary physics experts of the 21st Century still do not know how to interpret it.
This demonstrates that nature is more imaginative than we are. Unexpected discoveries take place if scientists adopt a modest, non-dogmatic attitude with a willingness to learn. When our telescopes unravel an anomalous object from interstellar space, like 3I/ATLAS, astronomers should not insist that it must be a comet of the type found in the Solar system for the simple reason that there is no cometary tail behind this object in our best image of it by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Currently, there are more physicists and more funding than witnessed by the generation of Niels Bohr, yet the rate of disruptive discoveries is lower than it was a century ago. A sure way to slow down the rate of breakthroughs is to herd the scientific community along the wrong path defined in the echo chambers of traditional thinking. Side paths which may lead to unexpected discoveries are missed in an intellectual culture that values the egos of the practitioners more than the mysteries of nature.
Since most Earth-Sun analogs formed billions of years before the Sun, it is possible that some Earth-like planets hosted scientists like Niels Bohr billions of years ago, allowing them to develop technologies that are far more advanced than ours and reach our backyard by now. The Danish reporter asked: “If Niels Bohr had lived today, would he be open-minded to the search for extraterrestrials?” I responded: “Probably, yes. A contemporary luminary like Stephen Hawking showed great interest in the search for extraterrestrials when he visited my home nine years ago.”
Ironically, most astrobiologists prioritize funding the search for extraterrestrial microbes over the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Many of them dismiss the possibility that an interstellar object, like 3I/ATLAS, might be technological in origin, despite its unusually large size, high speed and fine-tuned trajectory which happens to be aligned with the ecliptic plane (at a likelihood of 0.002) and passes exceptionally close to Mars, Venus and Jupiter (likelihood of 0.00005).
On this backdrop, I intentionally advocate for considering the possibility of a technological origin for 3I/ATLAS so that astronomers will not miss the opportunity to collect ample data on it in the coming month from ground-based and space telescopes. Future data might either show that 3I/ATLAS is a natural object with a rank-0 or a technological object with a rank-10 on the recently defined Loeb scale (accessible here).
The process of uncovering the truth by gathering new data appeals to the public. It also inspires young kids to pursue science and discover truths that their parents missed. This was and still is my motivation in pursuing science. I maintained my childhood curiosity in my adult life by not subscribing to social media. This is for a simple reason. When walking on the beach, I often see colorful sea shells that were just swept ashore. The older sea shells are broken and colorless because they rubbed against their environment for a long time. In the same fashion, groupthink on social networks removes the original colors of our genuine scientific curiosity.
I gave up long ago on my prospects of changing the mindset of senior colleagues. But my hope lies in convincing young kids to pursue science with a curious mind. As a result, my biggest reward is to inspire young kids to be scientists. Today, I received a message titled “Because of You!” about my recent work on 3I/ATLAS:
“Dr Loeb,
I thought I needed to inform you that due to your “rebel” views my son and daughter, 7th grade and 6th grade respectively, are more and more excited about science. At dinner my children are telling me Dr Loeb said… And Dr Loeb said…. This is so wonderful. I’m a recently retired US Air Force combat pilot. My last aircraft was the F-22 Raptor. So, science has always been the most interesting field because we are still constantly learning. Recently, you were on CNN discussing 3i/Atlas and the interviewer kept saying but Dr Loeb, NASA says this is only a comet. Why is your view so different? And you said but aren’t we supposed to question as scientists? This is what is bringing in young, new kids around the world to be interested in science. We should question. Bravo Avi! Bravo! Thank you for bringing my children back to the science classroom.
Signed: Col. (Ret) USAF”
This message made my day. I responded as follows:
“Thank you so much. You can follow my updates by subscribing for free to my essays at:
I hope your kids will find some of my essays inspiring and that they will become scientists and lead us to a better future!
Avi”
To which the response was:
“Thanks, Dr Loeb! I showed my daughter your response and she said anything about aliens and you have her attention. She’s off to gloat to her friends that “she” has been emailing the real Dr Loeb. Again, thank you for the positive influence you’re planting. This means more than you know. Give NASA hell. (NASA-Never A Straight Answer)”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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.
