Speaker 1: Okay, let's start with the thought experiment. What if everything
we thought we knew, like fundamentally new about cosmic objects,
how they move, what they're made of, how they get
their power, and it wasn't just a bit off, but
actually profoundly wrong. Because that's kind of what we're diving
into today. We're looking at this celestial body, three Ida Lists,
currently cruising through our Solar system. It's only the third
confirmed interstellar object we've ever.
Speaker 2: Spotted, right, the third official one.
Speaker 1: And it's not just unusual. It seems to be actively challenging,
like the basic rules of astrophysics and planetary science. It's
a real cosmic rule breaker, and honestly, it feels like
it's rewriting our understanding of the universe with every new
bit of data.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's probably not an exaggeration to say three
IA Lists is maybe the most contentious piece of astronomical
data we've seen since I don't know pulsars were discovered.
Our sources, the papers, the observations, they're just packed with
details that go way beyond the.
Speaker 1: Basis basics, being like it's fast y kilometers a second
and came from outside our Solar system.
Speaker 2: Exactly that part's settled. But our mission here in this
deep dive is really to get into the scope of
the problem. This object isn't just unusual in the way
scientists sometimes say things are.
Speaker 1: Unusual, like oh, that's peculiar.
Speaker 2: No, this is different. It's combined characteristics. They're so statistically improbable,
bordering on impossible by conventional models, that it's genuinely creating well,
a bit of an intellectual crisis in physics. We're here
to dig into those impossible details, the ones making researchers
really really uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: And what hits you immediately, I think is just the
sheer range of contradictions. You know, if it was just
one weird thing, maybe an odd chemical reading m h,
you can try and file it away. Okay, that's an anomaly,
we'll figure it out.
Speaker 2: Later, right, You could try to normalize it.
Speaker 1: But this thing, it's like a whole symphony of impossibility
playing out. It's defined basic cosmic chemistry, like flinging stuff
into space that shouldn't exist in that form. Its movement
is so precise it feels like random chance just can't
explain it. It's basically threading a cosmic needle.
Speaker 2: A needle that the math says shouldn't even be there exactly.
And that's what's so fascinating, isn't it. Scientists are visibly
struggling to normalize this data because the anomalies stack up
so neatly against all the established models. It's like, if
the chemistry points towards maybe a controlled system, then the
trajectory seems to imply some kind of intention or at
least non random guidance, and then the thermal properties suggest
active regulation. You put those three things.
Speaker 1: Together, chemistry, trajectory, heat.
Speaker 2: And you shift from just an interesting natural phenomenon to
a really profound scientific challenge, one that almost demands a
non traditional explanation or at least physics we don't know yet.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack that first part. Then, Yeah, this huge
chemical contradiction starting with a nickel. Now, when three I
at least was first spotted spewing gas, people notice nickel.
That's already weird, right, comments asteroids. Nickel out gassing isn't
really their thing.
Speaker 2: Not typically, No, it's unusual.
Speaker 1: But here's the detail that pushes it from unusual into well,
almost unbelievable territory. In every single natural cosmic process we've
ever seen, from supernova's blowing up to asteroids forming. Nickel
is basically chemically glued.
Speaker 2: To iron, right, They form together, they exist together. When
you heat cosmic stuff up, the elements don't just like
politely separate, they stay mixed.
Speaker 1: To get them apart here on Earth takes massive industrial processes,
huge amounts of energy, sustained effort.
Speaker 2: And that's the absolute core of this nickel mystery. The
spectroscopic analysis, the late readings they've confirmed the nickel being
ejected is staggeringly pure. We're talking at least ninety nine
point nine seven percent pure nickel.
Speaker 1: Ninety nine point ninety seven Just let that sink in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that level of refinement, it actually exceeds standard industrial
refining processes we use here on Earth. And yet this
object hurtling through cold empty space is somehow achieving this
purity effortlessly, it seems, and crucially without the iron, without
the iron that must accompany it in every known natural formation,
it's just missing, I.
Speaker 1: Mean picture of foundry. Right. Trying to get nickel that pure,
you need giant furnaces, electromagnetic separator, super controlled environments. It's
a massive energy hog.
Speaker 2: Colossal amounts of.
Speaker 1: Energy three ia lass. There's no visible sign of anything
that could power this, no hint of nuclear reactions, no
giant solar panels, no obvious machinery. It's like it's doing
high grade materials processing inside a black box with an
efficiency that just lass at space thermodynamics as we know it.
Speaker 2: It's a profound energy problem. Seriously, the energy needed just
to break those nickel atoms away from their usual companions
like iron, and then to somehow expel only the purre nickel.
It's enormous. If this object is processing raw materials it
picked up somewhere to get this output, it implies there
has to be some kind of onboard energy source and
a system for thermal control managing that heat. That it
is completely alien to established physics.
Speaker 1: So it breaks basic energy rules for inert objects pretty much.
Speaker 2: It violates the conservation of energy principle as we apply
it to simple cold space rocks. It's doing complex material
work continuously while looking like well, just a rock exposed
to vacuum.
Speaker 1: And Okay, if that wasn't weird enough, it gets fundamentally
stranger when you look at the stuff being ejected, the
ejected itself. It's not just a random cloud of nickel dust.
Speaker 2: No, not at all. Hira's imaging has actually let material
scientists study these nickel particles from Afar and what they're
seeing at about ten thousand kilometers out from the main body.
The particles are just drifting randomly. They seem to be
arranging themselves into distinct, organized patterns organized how this structural
anomaly is critical. The patterns show geometric regularities. They look
like things were only just starting to develop on Earth,
like advanced manufacturing processes, specifically molecular.
Speaker 1: Manufacturing, argular manufacturing, building things atom by atom.
Speaker 2: Essentially, yeah, building materials atom by atom may be allowing
for pre programmed self assembly, for these nickel particles to
organize themselves into layered geometric structures out there in the
chaos of the solar wind and radiation. It strongly suggests active,
purposeful manipulation, not just random outgassing.
Speaker 1: Right, so it forces you to think this isn't just
passive venting. It's like the nickel is behaving like some
kind of self assembling nanostructure, but on a huge scale
out in space. You almost have to leap to a
conclusion that sounds well scientifically reckless. Is this thing actively
manufacturing something or deploying something as it goes. The materials
are just too clean and their behavior is too structured.
Speaker 2: The structure is deeply unsettling. Yeah, but honestly, the timing
of the emissions might be even more alarming. For planetary
science models. Natural outgassing from comets, you know, driven by
the sun heating up ice, it's typically messy, irregular, patchy,
exactly continuous, sometimes sputtering, other times fluctuates depending on how
close it is to the sun, which bit of ice
is facing the heat.
Speaker 1: But this object, it follows this incredibly strict on off cycle,
like with the precision of a digital clock. We're talking
major emission events lasting exactly seventeen point five.
Speaker 2: Minutes exactly seventeen point five.
Speaker 1: Yep, followed by exactly forty two point three minutes of
almost no activity, minimal output. Wow, And this cycle just
repeats over and over. Researchers are literally calling it computer
like regularity. Natural processes, especially chemical ones driven by fluctuating
solar energy, they just don't work like a digital timer,
you know, not down to the decimal point.
Speaker 2: No, they really don't. That level of mechanical precision. It
screams automation, a controlled program system just running a loop.
Speaker 1: It's the stability of that timing that completely breaks the
natural explanation absolutely.
Speaker 2: People analyzing the data, they're finding variations only in the
realm of microseconds, which is just unheard of for a
bulk material phenomenon like outgassing in space. The first the reaction,
naturally was to look for some kind of resonance, maybe
a gravitational wobble or a spin cycle, something that could
naturally produce these timed bursts, and nothing fits. The precision
is simply too tight, too perfect.
Speaker 1: Okay, So if the nickel suggests processing and the timing
suggests automation, what are the fuel the carbon dioxide anomaly?
Because basic Comet's one on one says water ice is
king right, it's the dominant volval of the main thing
that vaporizes.
Speaker 2: Right, because water ice is generally far more abundant in
the places where comets form, and it vaporizes pretty easily.
Speaker 1: So finding this object running almost exclusively on CO two,
that's like finding a car engine designed for gasoline that
somehow only runs on paint thinner.
Speaker 2: It's a good analogy, It just fundamentally shouldn't exist based
on our models of how icy bodies form and behave.
It points to either a formation environment we've literally never
conceived of, or again, a highly controlled system managing its fuel.
Speaker 1: And the two you word yet again, seems to be stability.
Speaker 2: Precisely. Processes are chaotic. They fluctuate like crazy as an
object heats up, cools down, turns different faces to the sun.
But three iatolus it maintains this mathematically precise eight to
one ratio carbon dioxide to water.
Speaker 1: Eight partz two one part water.
Speaker 2: And get this, that ratio has remained stable within zero
point zero two percent since they started watching it.
Speaker 1: Closely zero points zero two percent stability.
Speaker 2: Yep, that extreme, non fluctuating stability in what should be
a chaotic thermal environment. That's exactly why researchers are calling
this a thermodynamic contradiction.
Speaker 1: Because a normal comet would have pockets of water ice
flashing off, or different patches heating up, messing with the
ratio constantly exactly.
Speaker 2: Maintaining eight to one with that level of stability implies
active management of how much gas is being released. It
demands an explanation that random formation and passive solar heating
just can't provide. It's almost like the object knows precisely
how much of each volatile it needs to expel, maybe
to maintain its activity level, or perhap perhaps even its
ability to make tiny course corrections.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's shift gears from the weird chemistry to navigation,
because if the composition is bizarre, the path three Ietis
is taking through our Solar system is well, it's almost
hostile to the laws of probability.
Speaker 2: That's a good way to put it. Hostile to probability.
Speaker 1: It's not just passing through casually. First off, it's traveling
backwards retrograde against the general flow of all the planet's,
all the major bodies in.
Speaker 2: Our system, which is unusual in itself for something coming
in right.
Speaker 1: And yet while going the wrong way, it's managing to
thread its way past multiple major planets in this really
precise pattern.
Speaker 2: We really need to pause and just absorb the sheer
statistical impossibility of this specific path. When astrophysicists model millions,
even billions, of random interstellar objects entering our Solar system,
the chance of one of them ending up on this
exact complex trajectory skimming past Venus then Mars, then Jupiter
in this controlled way while moving backwards. The calculated probability
is about zero point zero zero zero.
Speaker 1: Five percent zero point zero zero five percent. Yeah, that number.
It's basically the scientific equivalent of I don't know, shuffling
a deck of cards once and having them come out
in perfect numerical order sorted by.
Speaker 2: Suit, or winning the lottery five times in a row
while being struck by lightning. Like you said earlier, it's
a number so small it forces you logically to abandon
the assumption of pure randomness. If the data holds up,
this object isn't just meandering, it's following a specific pas Okay,
and that mind boggling statistic doesn't even fully capture the
dynamic weirdness of the planetary encounters themselves. This is where
the object seems to be just ignoring classical Newtonian gravity,
or at least interacting with it in a way we
don't understand. Oh so, any fast moving object like this
one passing near a big planet like Jupiter or even Venus,
it should get a gravitational kick, a slingshot effect. Its
trajectory should become unpredictable, often changing course pretty radically. That's
basic orbital.
Speaker 1: Mechanic makes sense. Gravity pulls it.
Speaker 2: But the anomaly here is that the trajectory calculations projecting
forward based on its current path show three I at
LUSS will maintain its course with only minimal gravitational influence
from these planets. The expected deviations, they're almost entirely absent.
Speaker 1: In the model, so it just sails past them.
Speaker 2: It's truly like watching a high velocity bullet somehow weave
between rain drops without changing its speed or direction significantly.
Our planetary defense models, which are built specifically to predict
these kinds of gravitational interactions and chaotic trajectories, they just
break down completely when you try to apply them to
this object.
Speaker 1: They don't work, which suggests what what could even cause that?
Speaker 2: It suggests something fundamental about its dynamics is completely different
from what we expect. Is it somehow actively counteracting the
gravitational pull, maybe by shifting mass internally, or is it
using some kind of tiny, non gravitational propulsion system we
can't detect. The only way for an object to consistently
ignore planetary grasps like this is if it can perform
incredibly precise course corrections in real time, effectively canceling out
the chaotic influence of these huge masses.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's a lot, and if we look even closer
at these flybys, the path starts to look less random
and frankly, a lot more well intentional. It's following what
some reasears are calling a highly peculiar sweet spot fly
by path.
Speaker 2: That's right, Let's look at the upcoming encounters. The Venus
approach that's set for September twenty twenty five. It's calculated
to pass at about zero point zero eight astronomical units.
That's close enough for really detailed, high resolution observation from Earth,
but just far enough away to minimize the gravitational kick
keeping it on course. Then comes the Mars fly by
in November twenty twenty five, same deal, another observational sweet spot,
close but not too close, and the Jupiter, and the
pattern culminates with the Jupiter encounter in January twenty twenty six,
again predicted to be at an optimal distance for study
without dramatically altering its path.
Speaker 1: An astronomical grand tour perfectly staged for us.
Speaker 2: It really feels that way. It's giving us the best
possible viewing window for seeing how it interacts with three
very different major planets, all while seemingly maintaining its original
galactic trajectory, and the odds get even longer. Honestly, when
you factor in the timing relative to Us to Earth.
Oh so these flybys there are time to happen when Venus, Mars,
and Jupiter are all basically on the same side of
the Sun as Earth is.
Speaker 1: Oh so they're visible to our telescopes.
Speaker 2: Exactly if these encounters happened when the planets were on
the far side of the Sun from Us, obscured by
the Sun's glare, our ability to observe these unique interactions
would be massively compromised. May be impossible for some details,
for all three to line up like that. It's just
a highly, highly improbable series of coincidences for a random
object drifting through space.
Speaker 1: It really strains belief, doesn't it. It's like the trajectory
was designed almost like a mission plan to conduct a
comprehensive planetary survey, one that's non dis eruptive to the
object itself, but perfectly optimized for detection and observation by
the nearest technological civilization, which happens to be Us.
Speaker 2: It certainly raises that question very pointedly, and speaking.
Speaker 1: Of optimal design, or at least weird choices, let's talk
about the angle it came in at most stuff from
interstellar space, you'd expect it to arrive roughly along the
galactic plane, right precisely.
Speaker 2: Think of the galactic plane the disk of the Milky
Way as the sort of cosmic river. It's where most
of the stars, gas, dust, and momentum are concentrated.
Speaker 1: So things tend to drift along with that current.
Speaker 2: Generally, Yeah, if an object is just drifting naturally passively,
it tends to follow the path of least resistance, which
is usually within or close to that plane. Yet three
i at lists came screaming into our system at almost
ninety degrees to the galactic plane. It basically doves straight
down into our system from above the river, metaphorically speaking,
a perpendicular dive, almost exactly perpendicular, and from a purely
natural perspective, that's dreamly energy inefficient. The gravitational pull of
the entire galaxy, all the mass in that disk, you'd
need a colossal amount of kinetic energy or some very
unusual initial conditions to push an object against that general
flow and come in at such a steep angle.
Speaker 1: It's like trying to sail a boat directly across a
powerful ocean current instead of riding with it. Why waste
all that energy?
Speaker 2: Exactly? But if your goal is an energy efficiency, but
rather information gathering, then this perpendicular approach is actually kind
of brilliant. It provides a comprehensive, almost top down survey
path through our entire planetary system. It gives a snapshot
of both the inner rocky planets and the outer gas
giants from a unique angle. It minimizes orbital confusion from
staying within the plane and maximizes the chances of encountering
different types of bodies.
Speaker 1: So again, we can try to force fit a natural explanation.
Maybe some rare gravitational interaction flung it out this way
millions of years ago.
Speaker 2: You can always try.
Speaker 1: But the overall pattern, when you look at the chemistry,
the timing, the traject the improbable flybys, this energy costly entriangle,
viewed holistically, it really starts to show purpose much louder
than luck. You just don't expect this many highly improbable
events to line up perfectly, sequentially, purely by chance. The
os become astronomical. Okay, let's shift focus again, this time
to the immediate physics. What's happening right around this object?
It's physical structure, it's dust cloud because that's weird too, apparently.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it doesn't follow the rules there either. Normally,
when a comet releases dust, that dust gets pushed away
by solar radiation pressure sunlight.
Speaker 1: Basically, right, that's what forms the tail pointing away from
the Sun. Just a random cloud of particles getting blown back.
Speaker 2: But here high resolution imaging is showing something completely unprecedented.
The dust particles, the material surrounding three I allis, they
aren't just forming a random cloud or a simple tail.
They seem to be organizing themselves into distinct layers, almost
like an onion structure, showing some kind of hierarchical.
Speaker 1: Arrangement layers of dust.
Speaker 2: How that's the question, and the most baffling detail, the
one that really breaks physics as we know it for
simple dust, is that some of those particles appear to
be moving against the solar radiation pressure.
Speaker 1: Wait, moving towards the sun or sideways against.
Speaker 2: The push, both in some cases moving in directions they
simply shouldn't be able to if only sunlight and gravity
are acting on them.
Speaker 1: That sounds physically impossible. If you imagine solar radiation pressure
like a constant gentle wind blowing dust away from the sun,
then for some particles to move back into that wind
or across it without being deflected, they have to be
self propelled.
Speaker 2: Either self propelled somehow or actively manipulated, maybe by localized
powerful magnetic fields we can't detect from here, or some
kind of electrostatic effect we don't understand. There's just no
known natural mechanism that allows inert dust particles around a
non magnetic object to behave this way, So.
Speaker 1: It implies, again, some kind of fine control.
Speaker 2: It implies either some form of charge manipulation on a
scale we haven't seen, or maybe even miniature localized propulsion
systems on the dust particles themselves. This level of fine
control over ejected mass it suggests technology or physics that
completely bypasses our current understanding of how particles interact in
low gravity under solar influence. The organized dust is almost
like a macroscopic display of that molecular manufacturing idea we
talked about with the nickel Mind.
Speaker 1: Boggling and what about heat the temperature readings you mentioned
thermal regulation earlier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the thermal stability of three eye lasts is completely counterintuitive.
It forces us to question basic thermodynamics in space, which
is unsettling.
Speaker 1: How so, what are the readings?
Speaker 2: Data coming in from various observatories, including infrared telescopes linked
to NASA's JPL, consistently show the object is maintaining a
near constant surface temperature round two hundred and fifty kelvin.
Speaker 1: Two hundred and fifty kelvin. That's so what minus twenty
three celsius or minus ten.
Speaker 2: Fahrenheit roughlye oh? Yeah, and the key is near constant.
This temperature barely fluctuates even as the object gets closer
to or farther from the Sun on its.
Speaker 1: Path or why is that a problem? Shouldn't it get
warmer as it gets closer to the.
Speaker 2: Sun exactly at its current distance, and based on its
likely size and reflectivity what we call its albedo, it
should be much much colder. Calculation suggests something closer to
minus one hundred degrees celsius, maybe even colder if it
were just a passive inert rock reflecting sunlight. So it's
way warmer than it should be, way warmer and stable.
To maintain two hundred and fifty kelvin consistently requires one
of two things. Either it's generating significant heat internally from
what the nickel refining or something else that's the mystery.
Or alternatively, it possesses an astonishingly effective system for managing
solar energy, capturing it, maybe storing it, controlling its own
absorption and reflection in a way that actively maintains that
specific temperature. It's like it has a thermostat.
Speaker 1: So it's regulating its own climate, maintaining an operational temperature.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's what it looks like. If we assume it's
just a rock, we have this profound thermodynamic contradiction. Where
is the extra heat coming from? And why is it
holding such a precise, non equilibrium temperature. It strongly suggests
internal activity, perhaps linked to the huge energy demands of
that nickel purification we discussed, or maybe related to the
energy needed for those Quartch corrections.
Speaker 1: The trajectory implies researchers must be scrambling to check their models. Oh.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, they're frantically checking their radiative models assumptions about surface properties.
Because the readings just don't make sense in the standard
context of space thermodynamics. The temperature stability really hints at
some kind of engineered system, perhaps designed to function optimally
within a specific narrow heat range, regardless of the chaotic
temperature swings of the external space environment.
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, chemistry, trajectory heat, anything else.
Speaker 2: Well, finally, there are these whispers in the radiofrequency data
from the object. Extremely faint but apparently structured radio frequency
signals have been picked up by at least three separate
listening stations, all pointing towards the direction of three iet elas.
Speaker 1: Okay, now that sounds like something out of science fiction.
Speaker 2: Well, the necessary scientific caution is crucial here. Officially, these
signals are being attributed to instrument anomalies, glitches, or maybe
random terrestrial or satellite interference standard procedure, but having multiple
geographically separate telescopes detect the exact same type of structured
signal makes the instrument error explanation statistically less likely. With
each detection and the signals themselves, the data that's been
analyzed shows patterns that apparently don't match any known natural
radio emission.
Speaker 1: Spectra, meaning not like pulsars or quasars.
Speaker 2: Or right, it's not random static. They don't look like
emissions from planetary magnetospheres. They're not like non natural radio bursts.
Reports suggests they exhibit some kind of periodicity, some structure,
hints of potential information content, although obviously undecipherable.
Speaker 1: I find it really telling that the scientific community is
kind of stuck here. The official papers have to be conservative, right,
They have to dismiss these as instrument errors or noise,
because the alternative is just revolutionary, too big, elite.
Speaker 2: It's the responsible scientific approach given the faintness and potential
for error.
Speaker 1: But the raw data, the actual signals detected at multiple sites,
it suggests the object is either emitting radio waves or
maybe reflecting them, or somehow interacting with radio frequencies in
a highly structured, non random way. It feels like the
elephant in the radio astronomy room that nobody really wants
to name out loud, because naming it changes absolutely everything.
Speaker 2: And this whole situation brings us to a really crucial
point about well, the human side of science, the process
of scientific normalization.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2: When scientists are confronted with data that seems to profoundly
violate fundamental principles. The initial reaction, the safe reaction, often
the career preserving reaction, is to try and fit it
back into the familiar, to normalize it.
Speaker 1: Right. You hear phrases like, oh, it's unusual, but maybe
not unprecedented exactly.
Speaker 2: They use the kind of mitigating language they tend to
downplay just how contradictory the combination of all these weird
characteristics truly is for three iol because acknowledging the full
strangeness of the synergy is uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's definitely a career risk to stand up and say, hey,
maybe this isn't natural. But if you honestly try to
find one other object in the entire history of astronomy
that displayed this exact specific combo.
Speaker 2: Ultra pure Knickel Manufacturer.
Speaker 1: Clockwork Commission's time to the microsecond.
Speaker 2: Defying gravitational slingshots, maintaining a constant warm operational temperature, it
just doesn't exist, not in the confirmed records. It's the
synergistic nature all these anomalies happening together in one object
that makes it genuinely singular, which.
Speaker 1: Leads to a bigger historical question. Doesn't it. Are these
interstellar visitors truly that rare? Or is it just that
our detection methods are new and maybe our scientific biases
have been filtering them out.
Speaker 2: That's a very active debate. Historical records, if you look closely,
might suggest that anomalous visitors are actually far more common
than just the three officially confirmed interstellar objects we know of.
Really like well, think about historical astronomical puzzles. Take the
Great Comet of eighteen forty four. Astronomers back then were
completely baffled by its behavior. It showed unexpected acceleration, subtle
movements that were purely gravitational that they just couldn't account
for using Newton's laws at the time.
Speaker 1: HM. Non gravitational acceleration sounds familiar.
Speaker 2: A bit like umamua Yeah. Then you go further back
you find Chinese records from the Song dynasty describing guest
stars that moved against the normal rotation of the heaven's
retrograde motion, just like three I tells is doing wow.
And you can find similar accounts among medieval Islamic astronomers.
They documented wandering lights that didn't follow predictable paths, didn't
match known planets or comments. Now, Traditionally, most of these
accounts get dismissed observational errors, misinterpretations, maybe atmospheric phenomena or
even folklore.
Speaker 1: Sure hard to verify, very hard.
Speaker 2: But what if even a small percentage of them were
legitimate sightings of objects behaving like three I Atlas? Suddenly
the idea of interstellar travelers maybe probes frequently surveying our system,
gains immediate historical context. It's not such a radical modern
idea anymore, which.
Speaker 1: Brings us right up to the modern problem, what you
call the filtering problem. We only officially confirm the biggest, brightest,
most active objects, right, and that gives us a totally
skewed picture of what might actually be out there.
Speaker 2: It almost certainly does think about the limits of our
current tech pan stars. The telescope system that found Umamua
and was involved in spotting three Atlis candidates. It scans
huge areas of the sky, which is great, but it
has to use relatively short exposure times because the sky is.
Speaker 1: So vast, so faint things get missed.
Speaker 2: Exactly if an object is too faint, or if it
moves too quickly across the field of view and disappears
between frames. It often gets automatically filtered out by the software,
classified as a transient, a cosmic ray hit, or just
a data anomaly not flagged as a real physical object
needing follow up. How many might be missed estimates vary,
but pan Stars and similar surveys have detected dozens, maybe
hundreds of other fast moving objects with trajectories that strongly
suggested an interstellar origin, but they were too faint or
moving too fast for the follow up observations required to
get them confirmed and published in academic journals. They fall
through the cracks of scientific rigor.
Speaker 1: And what about the heat signatures. NASA's Neowise mission looks
in the infrared right specializes in heat.
Speaker 2: Yes, and NEOWISE has its own catalog of intriguing objects.
Objects with inconsistent thermal signatures, things that appear too warm
or too cold for their distance from the Sun based
on standard models, or objects whose heat profiles shift in
ways that don't match how known asteroids or comets should.
Speaker 1: Behave and those get set aside too.
Speaker 2: Often Yes, because they don't conform to the accepted thermal models,
they become difficult to classify, harder to publish, so they
might get flagged as unusual, but not pursued with the
same intensity as something that fits neatly into existing categories.
Speaker 1: So the powerful conclusion here is that three I at
lists might only seem exceptional because it happens to be
large enough, chemically active enough, maybe moving just slowly enough
for our current limited technology to actually nail down and confirm.
Speaker 2: That's a very real possibility. We're almost certainly missing potentially
thousands of smaller or colder or faster interstellar objects, whether
they're natural rocks or something else. The very rigor of
our confirmation standards, while necessary for good science, unintentionally creates
this potentially massive scientific blind spot for the truly weird.
Speaker 1: This really demands a major shift in perspective, then a
move towards I guess scientific humility.
Speaker 2: I think that's exactly the right word, humility. We have
to remember the history of astronomy is just littered with
examples where ideas we now take for granted, like planetary
rings around Saturn or black holes or planets orbiting other
stars exoplanets, were considered purely speculative, even fringe science fiction
for decades or centuries before technology finally caught up and
confirmed them.
Speaker 1: Right, people laughed at those ideas.
Speaker 2: They did so, dismissing the possibilities presented by an object
like three I at lists just because they don't fit
our current, undoubtedly incomplete understanding of galactic physics and maybe
even technology. Well, frankly, that borders on scientific arrogance. The
data itself is practically screaming at us to imagine new
physics or at least new possibilities. And this is precisely
why this whole field of study focusing on technosignatures is
gaining so much traction and legitimacy right now.
Speaker 1: Techno signatures meaning signs of technology, not just life itself exactly.
Speaker 2: It's the search for evidence of technology engineering artifacts, rather
than just biosignatures like atmospheric gases that might indicate life.
It represents a really important intellectual expans beyond traditional setting,
which mostly focused on listening for deliberate radio signals. Technosignatures
broadens the search to look for physical evidence of alien engineering,
active or defunct.
Speaker 1: And when you apply those kinds of criteria, those technosignature
checklists to three I alis, it starts ticking an almost
alarming number of boxes, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: It really does. Let's quickly review those anomalies we discussed,
but through the specific lens first, energy use and control.
Speaker 1: Right, it uses and seemingly controls energy in ways we
just cannot explain with natural forces. That includes the enormous
unexplained energy needed to produce ninety nine point ninety seven
percent pure nickel.
Speaker 2: And the ability to maintain that constant, apparently optimal operational
temperature of two hundred and fifty kelvin despite its changing
distance from the Sun and the cold of space that
implies energy generation and thermal regulation far beyond a natural object.
Speaker 1: Okay, Box one ticked What's next.
Speaker 2: Second, Stability and precision that define natural chaotic processes like
the super.
Speaker 1: Stable eight one CO two to water ratio maintained within
point zero two.
Speaker 2: Percent YEP and the clockwork seventeen point five minute emission
events timed almost.
Speaker 1: Perfectly down to the microsecond right, and.
Speaker 2: Its apparent ability to maintain a precise trajectory minimizing gravitational
influence from massive planets against all standard Mutonian expectations. Program
technology often requires precision and stability. Natural processes are inherently
messy and variable.
Speaker 1: Okay, Box two ticked precision what else.
Speaker 2: And finally, the path itself. It follows a trajectory that
appears highly non random, maybe even intentional, rather than purely accidental.
Speaker 1: That incredibly low probability the point zero zero five percent
chance of this specific path occurring randomly.
Speaker 2: Combined with those sweet spot flybys timed perfectly for observation from.
Speaker 1: Earth, and that highly energy inefficient ninety degree entry angle
which happens to be great for a.
Speaker 2: Survey exactly taken together, it strongly suggests as a non random,
perhaps targeted journey, a path that might be energy costly
from a natural drift perspective, but incredibly information rich if
your goal is to conduct a comprehensive survey of a
new solar system.
Speaker 1: Okay, so energy precision path it fits a lot of
potential technosignature markers.
Speaker 2: It does, and this inevitably brings us, at least conceptually
to hypothetical ideas like Bracewell.
Speaker 1: Probes ah, the von Neumann Bracewell probe idea autonomous explorers exactly.
Speaker 2: Theoretical autonomous space probes may be designed by some advanced
civilization ages ago for interstellar exploration. They're often imagined as
being self repairing self powered, maybe capable of replicating themselves
and potentially remaining dormant for incredibly long period centuries millennia
until they perhaps detect signs of a developing technological civilization
like radio waves, at which point they might activate or
investigate further.
Speaker 1: So are you saying three Ielas is a Bracewell probe?
Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely not. We cannot definitively claim that would be
a massive leap based on current evidence. But it's bizarre
combination of anomalies, the ultrapure manufacturing, the programmed emissions, the
regulated temperature, the improbable trajectory places it firmly within the
category of objects that force us scientifically and philosophically to
confront the possibility of technological artifacts from elsewhere. Its mere existence,
confirmed and studied, compels us to expand our scientific imagination
way beyond the comfortable confines of known natural phenomena and
terrestrial physics.
Speaker 1: It really stretches the boundaries of what we consider possible.
Speaker 2: It does, and I think the crucial takeaway here for
everyone listening is that knowledge isn't just about collecting facts.
It's most valuable when we understand the implications, the applications,
and how it challenges our existing framework. The ongoing journey
of three alists is doing exactly that. It's forcing us
to fundamentally question our core assumptions about cosmic mechanics, about chemistry,
about probability itself. It's a profound test of our collective
intellectual humility hashtag tag outro and.
Speaker 1: On cool humility. That feels like the right note to
end on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Because ultimately, whether this object eventually reveals some entirely new,
exotic natural process we never dreamed.
Speaker 1: Of, which would be amazing in itself.
Speaker 2: Absolutely amazing, or if it points towards something more extraordinary.
Either way, its existence is pushing the boundaries of our
curiosity and challenging how we think about the universe.
Speaker 1: So we'll leave you, the listener with this final kind
of provocative thought that you on. If the math tells
you an event like this object's trajectory has only a
point zero zero zero five percent chance of happening randomly,
at what point do you stop calling it just a coincidence?
At what point does the sheer weight of the combined
improbabilities force you to acknowledge that the pattern itself might
suggest purpose? And if there is a purpose, What hidden
purpose could possibly require an object to expend the colossal
energy needed to travel across the galaxy dive into our
system at that weird ninety degree angle, just so it
can maintain a cozy internal temperature of minus twenty three
degrees celsius while meticulously manufacturing ultrapure nickel on a perfect
time or right under our noses where we're sure to
see it. Think about the implications of that kind of
potential purpose. What could it possibly be doing