Speaker 1: Welcome back to the deep dive. Today. We're we're not
just looking up at the sky. We are basically putting
on our detective hats because we have a cosmic mystery
on our hands, a mystery that is frankly baffling some
of the sharpest minds in theoretical physics. We sort of
take for granted that the universe plays by a certain
set of rules, you know.
Speaker 2: Right, things. We understand gravity, chemistry.
Speaker 1: All of that exactly. Yeah, but what happens when an
object comes along and just completely blows up the rule book?
Speaker 2: Well, that object is commet three I lists. It's an
interstellar visitor that has shown behavior so anomalous, so structurally strange,
that it has reignited one of the most provocative debates
in all of science, which is are we looking at
a really complex, you know, but totally natural event or
is this the signature of advanced technology from another star system?
Speaker 1: And that is the core attension we are diving into today.
We're going to be pulling out the most important, the
highest stakes insights from the recent analysis by Professor Avilobe.
Speaker 2: The renowned theoretical physicist at Harvard. Yeah, he's the founder
of the Galileo project, and you could argue he's the
world's most prominent advocate for scientifically searching for what they
call techno signature.
Speaker 1: Right, technological signatures. So for anyone who followed that whole
saga with Umamua a few years back, with its strange acceleration,
think of three ideless as it's lesser known but maybe
even more mysterious sibling. I think that's fair to say. Yeah,
So our mission today is pretty clear. We're going to
dissect the physical evidence. We're talking about its unusual size,
its orbital alignment, and most critically, the strange emissions people
are calling jets. Yeah, and will unpack the competing ideas
right from say the commet just breaking up all the
way to technological crusters.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and we'll explore why. At least according to Professor Low,
the scientific community has to stay open to these well,
to the most extreme possibilities, especially when the data just
keeps defying all the standard models.
Speaker 1: And we have to start with the the immediate tension. Yeah,
the thing that's kind of fueling this entire investigation right now,
the missing data, the pursuit of the one piece of
evidence that could potentially answer all of these questions. The
high resolution images that are still and this is kind
of baffling missing from the public domain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an immediate and very frustrating tension because even
after all the cited reasons, the government shut downs, the
technical delays, even after all that ended, the most critical
pictures of this thing have not been released. Okay, So
let's get right into that section one, the pursuit of
data and why these specific NASA images matter so much.
This delay in releasing the images, it's more than just
an annoyance for researchers. It really introduces this layer of
complication and even skepticism that just shouldn't be there in
what should be a straightforward astronomical.
Speaker 1: Discoveryeah, because you're dealing with a moving target.
Speaker 2: Right exactly. It's a dynamic object. It's retating, it's outgassing,
it's flying through space at incredible speed. In a situation
like that, data transparency and you know, getting that data
out quickly is absolutely paramount.
Speaker 1: And Professor Lobe was really public about this. He mentioned
he had gotten assurances from two different sources that NASA
was planning to release the images in a few days
in the middle of next week. That was months ago,
now months ago. So why, I mean, in this day
and age of instant data transfer and global scientific collaboration,
why are these images taking so long to see the
light of day?
Speaker 2: That is the million dollar question, isn't it. The official line,
according to Loab, was the need for processing these images
now to be fair to NASA and the other agencies involved. Okay,
processing high resolution images from deep space is not the
same as you know, clicking a filter on your phone.
Speaker 1: Right, Let's dig into that for a second for our
listeners who might not know, what does processing actually involve here?
When you're looking at something this far away with say
the Hubble or big ground based telescope.
Speaker 2: The complexity is just immense. It all comes down to
what's called the signal to noise ratio. You're imaging an
object that's what twenty nine million miles from Mars.
Speaker 1: Which is still incredibly far away, incredibly far.
Speaker 2: The light signal you're getting is just unbelievably faint to
So processing involves a few key steps. First, there's image sagging.
To gather enough light, you can't just take one long picture.
You take lots of shorter exposures. And then you have
to digitally and perfectly align them and stack them. This
maximizes the signal of the comet itself while minimizing all
the random background noise, So.
Speaker 1: You're basically building one good picture out of hundreds of
little one precisely.
Speaker 2: Then there's cosmic ray removal. The telescope detectors are constantly
getting hit by high energy particles from space, right, I've
seen those.
Speaker 1: They look like little white streaks on the raw images.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and those have to be digitally identified and removed
without accidentally deleting you know, a real star or part
of the comet's data. And then third, there's a process
called deconvolution.
Speaker 1: Sounds complicated, it is.
Speaker 2: It's where they use math to basically sharpen the image
to correct for any blurring that was introduced by the
telescope's own optics, or, if it's a ground telescope, the
blurring from our own atmosphere.
Speaker 1: So okay, there is a genuine technical reason it could
take some time, maybe even weeks. But the data was
collected back in early October of twenty twenty three, So
with an object this significant, why the ongoing delay we're
talking months now, And that's.
Speaker 2: Why Lobe skepticism is so understandable. I mean, yes, processing
is complex, but is also a standard operating procedure for
these agencies. They have whole teams of people dedicated to
just this. Right, So when the entire astronomical community is
on the edge of its seat waiting for data that
could potentially rewrite our understanding of interstellar objects, the urgency
is just it's extreme. The longer this delay goes on,
the higher the risk that scientists just fall back on
speculation instead of hard evidence.
Speaker 1: And Love himself said he'd rather believe the story about
technical delays than the alternative, right.
Speaker 2: He said something like, I prefer to believe that this
story then think they're withholding one's information. Here it's him
giving the benefit of the doubt. But you can hear
the strain in that.
Speaker 1: So let's really hammer this home. Why is this specific
batch of data so important. It's not just that they're
the highest resolution images, right. The perspective is key.
Speaker 2: Absolutely essential. These images were specifically taken from the side
of three ie at lists. Now, if you imagine an
object that could be elongated or flat, or even has
some kind of structure to it, Okay, observing it head
on gives you almost no information about its true shape.
You just see the brightness of the coma, the gas cloud,
and maybe a blurry tail.
Speaker 1: It's like trying to figure out the shape of a
coin by only looking at it face on. You can't
tell it's thin and round until you look at it
from the edge.
Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy. The side view is everything for
spatial resolution for understanding the object's real geometry. For instance,
if three eye lasts is anything like umuh Mua, which
some people hypothesized was pancake shaped or cigar shaped.
Speaker 1: A side view image would confirm that instantly.
Speaker 2: Instantly, and even more importantly, that side perspective allows scientists
to pinpoint the exact origin points of these jets and emissions.
That's crucial for figuring out if they're just random outgassing
spots on a tumbling rock or something more like structured
thrust nozzles.
Speaker 1: And this whole opportunity was timed perfectly. It was planned
for that pass on October two, twenty twenty three, when
it was at its closest point to our observation capabilities.
This wasn't a random snapshot, No, this was.
Speaker 2: A deliberate, maximized opportunity. It was a rare, unusual opportunity,
as Low would put it. I mean, think about planetary geometry.
These windows where an interstellar object passes relatively close to
one of our high powered instruments, they're really, really rare.
Speaker 1: So when it happens, you point everything you've got at it.
Speaker 2: Every telescope that can pivot is aimed at that target.
This alignment was chosen because it maximized the potential for data.
The information they collected then is probably the best chance
we'll ever have to capture the true physical characteristics of
three ilis.
Speaker 1: And if that data shows the object is asymmetrical or
highly structured, or has what look like actual thrusters.
Speaker 2: Then the entire debate just shifts instantly.
Speaker 1: So why does a delay of weeks or in this
case months matter scientifically? I mean beyond just feeding public impatients.
Speaker 2: It matters because this is a transient phenomenon. It's not
a static rock. If three I list is out gassing
or if it's maneuvering, those activities aren't constant. The jets change,
the tail structure evolves over time. Okay, If and it's
a big if, if the object is technological, it might
even power down, or adjust its course, or just stop
emitting altogether. By the time we get the old images
from October, we lose the chance to correlate that old
data with the object's current behavior.
Speaker 1: It stops you from doing follow up observations.
Speaker 2: Exactly, It cripples them. If the images show a jet
firing from a specific spot, astronomers need to re aim
their telescopes now to see if that jet is still
active or if a different one has started up. Delays
like this turn real time diagnostics into to well, just
historical record keeping.
Speaker 1: It changes the investigation from an act of forensic analysis
into a purely historical one. You lose the ability to
catch the suspect in the act, so to speak.
Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it.
Speaker 1: But let's pivot now to the evidence we do have,
because the data that has been collected, even from less
perfect views, is already profoundly strange, and it all centers
on the object's jets, and they're really underving coordination.
Speaker 2: Right. If the first part of this story is about
the tension of missing data, this next part is about
the tension of the data. We already have, data that
just refuses to fit into the standard cometary mold, and
the most compelling anomaly by far involves the detailed structure
and behavior of its jets.
Speaker 1: So what are we actually seeing? What do the images show?
Speaker 2: Well, Lowe have noted that their observations show all the
seven jets are coming from the south of the central object,
the nucleus.
Speaker 1: Seven jets. That alone seems like.
Speaker 2: A lot, it's notable. Yeah, but the part that really
defines phys is the directional anomaly. These seven jets are
observed pointing in multiple, sometimes completely contradictory directions. He says,
some of them towards the Sun, some of them away
from the Sun.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's break that down. If we stick with the simplest,
most common explanation for a comet, which is just sublimation
from solar heating. Sure, how does that model fall apart
immediately with this observation.
Speaker 2: Well, a standard comet is you know, it's essentially a big,
dirty snowball. As it gets closer to the Sun, the
Sun's radiation heats the ice on its surface, usually water
co CO two, and that ice sublimates, turning directly into
gas and carrying dust.
Speaker 1: With it, and that creates the jets.
Speaker 2: That he tates the outward force the jets, and those
jets are almost always directed generally away from the Sun
or at least localized to the side of the nucleus
that's currently facing the Sun's heat.
Speaker 1: So jets pointing toward the Sun or coming from the dark,
unlit side, that just shouldn't be happening under that model.
Speaker 2: It shouldn't. I mean, sure, complex rotation and internal pressures
can sometimes cause weird transient jets, but sustained, coordinated jets
that are pointing toward the Sun, that's a massive, massive
issue for the natural heating model. It strongly suggests some
kind of internal or directed power source, not just passive
solar energy.
Speaker 1: But that's not even the weirdest part, is it. Yeah,
The real knockout punch to the standard comet theory comes
when you factor in the object's rotation. This is the
rotational conflict.
Speaker 2: This is the scientific crux of the whole argument. We
know from observation that the object is rotating very, very rapidly.
They've pinned its rotational period at a remarkably swift four
point one scene.
Speaker 1: Hours, so it's spinning completely around almost six times every
single day.
Speaker 2: Yes, we're dealing with a body that is tumbling very
very fast.
Speaker 1: Okay, So if a comet is spinning that fast, and
it's passively spinning out materialized dust, whatever from specific spots
on its surface, what should happen to the jets of
that material as they travel away from it?
Speaker 2: They should be smeared absolutely one hundred percent of the time.
Think about the physics here. The material that forms the jet,
the gas and dust. It gets ejected at a certain speed,
maybe a three hundred meters per second for the dust,
up to a kilometer per second for the gas. Right,
But as that material is traveling away from the nucleus,
the nucleus itself is constantly changing its orientation. Because of
that four point one sis hour.
Speaker 1: Rotation, you've got a moving source launching material from a
spinning platform exactly.
Speaker 2: So, over the timeframe of the observations, lob mentions about
a month, that rotation should introduce a well, a catastrophic
amount of smearing and blurring into the jet structure. Instead
of seeing tight, coherent streams, you'd expect to see these
curved spirals or maybe a diffuse fan shape that traces
the rotational path of the source point on the surface.
Speaker 1: We should see jets that look like blurry paint being
flung off a rapidly spinning carousel.
Speaker 2: That's perfect, So the spinning garden hose analogy is dead on.
If the jets were just passive outgassing, the stream of
water should spiral out like crazy. But what is the
actual observations coherence? It's coherence. The jets are observed as
tightly coordinated and crucially not significantly smeared by the rotation,
and that means the outflow mechanism has to be highly localized,
highly controlled, or it's somehow managing to compensate for that
rapid spin.
Speaker 1: The source point seem to be maintaining a fixed direction
relative to the Solar system, even though the object itself
is tumbling over and over every four hours.
Speaker 2: Yes, the gas and dust are traveling outward, but the
direction of the launch seems to be independent of the
object's spin. That is a massive violation of the expected
physics for a rotating, passively outgassing body. It just it
forces you to ask what kind of mechanism can launch
a jet that is not smeared by rotation. Well, it
requires a mechanism that is actively compensating for the spin
a passive physical process like ice sublimating. It only knows
about heat and local pressure it's done, but an active
technological mechanism, like a thruster on a spacecraft.
Speaker 1: It is an internal guidance system.
Speaker 2: Exactly, it has a system that knows exactly when and
how to fire to maintain a specific vector in space,
regardless of how the chassis is rotating. If you want
to move your spinning craft and direction X, you fire
your thrusters at precise moments to overcome the influence of
that spin.
Speaker 1: So the coherent jets we see they suggest that the
directionality is being actively maintained.
Speaker 2: It strongly suggests it. And this level of detailed, unsmeared jets,
despite rapid rotation, it really moves the object out of
the category of just a weird commet and firmly into
the category of a physical process we don't understand yet,
or technology, which forces us to consider all the options right.
Speaker 1: Which brings us to section three, laying out all the possibilities,
from natural explanations to technological thrusters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the scientific process demands rigor here before we
jump to the most exciting conclusion, we absolutely have to
try and exhaust every viable natural explanation that could possibly
account for these jets, and Professor lobe He systematically proposed
and then analyzed three possibilities, two natural and one technological. Okay,
so let's start with the most obvious tweak to the
standard model. Maybe the heating is an uniform across the surface.
This is possibility one uneven solar heating. The idea is
that instead of the whole sunlit side sublimating, maybe there
are only specific deep pockets of the surface facing the
sun are getting warmed up.
Speaker 1: So they could explain why there were seven distinct jets
instead of just a big blurry cloud a generalized coma.
Speaker 2: It could. Yes, it's a subtle but plausible refinement to
the model, But what's the immediate overwhelming flaw in that hypothesis.
Speaker 1: It doesn't explain all the data.
Speaker 2: It's an insufficient explanation. While that localized heating could maybe
explain the jets on the sunlit side, it completely fails
to account for that crucial directional anomaly.
Speaker 1: We just talked about, the jets that are also seen
going on the opposite direction away from the sun.
Speaker 2: Right solar heating is a one way street. It cannot
generate sustained outflow on the side of an object that's
shielded from the sun, so at best, uneven solar heating
is a partial and ultimately a very inadequate explanation for
the totality of the jet's behavior. Okay, so it's not
just simple heating. What's next, Maybe the object itself is
structurally compromised. Let's move to possibility to object fragmentation. This
is a robust natural hypothesis because, I mean, we see
this happen all the time with comets. They're fragile. The
theory here is that the object broke up, and what
we see is the trail of material from the fragments
flying out. A shattering event could release material explosively and
create plumes that at first might look like jets.
Speaker 1: So how do these kinds of breakups usually look in
astronomical data? What are the telltale signs?
Speaker 2: Well? When a comet fragments, usually from tidal stress, passing
too close to a planet or sudden thermal stress, two
things generally happen. First, the debris field becomes visibly diffuse.
You can see a clear trail of material where individual
fragments sometimes called mini comets continue along the same orbital path,
each with its own tiny coma, So.
Speaker 1: You stop having one single central object.
Speaker 2: Correct, you lose that single coherent nucleus. And second, these
fragments often display chaotic or inconsistent acceleration as they're small
pieces randomly outgas in different directions.
Speaker 1: But the observational evidence for three EE tiles it contradicts
both of those scions precisely.
Speaker 2: Loll pointed out that the observations show quote, it looks
like a single object in the middle. There is a
clear centralized nucleus from which all seven jets appear to
be originating. You don't see a diffuse cloud or a
long spreading trail of smaller fragments.
Speaker 1: So that pretty much undermines the breakup theory. It heavily
undermines it. Yeah, and furthermore, a chaotic breakup event would
likely increase the smearing and the randomness of the outflow.
But what we observe is the exact opposite coherence and coordination.
So okay, we have two leading natural explanations uneven heating
and fragmentation, and both of them fail to comprehensively explain
the observed data, especially that combination of unsmeared coordination and
the bidirectional jets.
Speaker 2: Which means we are forced by scientific rigor to seriously
entertain the third possibility technology. This is where the AHA
moment comes in, not because it's the answer anyone prefers,
but because it's the most elegant mechanical explanation for the
anomalies we see. This is the hypothesis that the jets
are thrusters from a technology object that are used to
maneuver and navigate.
Speaker 1: So the technological idea basically flips the cause and effect
on its head. It says the jets aren't passive consequences
of sunlight hitting ice.
Speaker 2: They are active components of a propulsion system. And this
single idea resolves the biggest conflict of all, that rotational
smearing problem. If these are controlled thrusters, they are firing
with a purpose. That purpose might be to stabilize the
craft or change its trajectory, or, most relevantly here, to
maintain their orientation relative to the solar system despite the
object's four point one six hour rotation.
Speaker 1: Because an active guidance system can calculate the exact thrust
needed to cancel out this exactly.
Speaker 2: It explains the coherence we observe. It directly connects the
jets to an intelligent, goal oriented manipulation, not just passive physics.
Speaker 1: It's a really striking dichotomy, isn't it. YEA one model
requires us to invent some complex, highly non standard cometary
physics that we've frankly never seen before just to explain
these seven jets.
Speaker 2: The other model, the other model, just requires us to
accept technology, which immediately simplifies the explanation for why they're
so coordinated.
Speaker 1: And that's the tension.
Speaker 2: That's the tension of the whole investigation and Low. While
he's quick to acknowledge that the verdict is still out,
he also emphasizes that when the simplest natural explanations fail,
scientists have a duty to investigate the next most plausible
physical explanations, even if those explanations are uncomfortable or require
a paradigm shift.
Speaker 1: We have to wait for the data, but we also
have to prepare for the possibility that the data confirms
something non natural.
Speaker 2: It's a cosmic investigation that demands impartiality.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah. But as soon as that t word technology
enters the discussion, the debate moves beyond just pure observation
and into well, into philosophical territory, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: It does, And that's where you see this intense friction
between those who are actively looking for technosignatures and the
let's say, the conservative mainstream of astronomy.
Speaker 1: And we saw that tension reflected in the source material
which brought up the position of doctor Mitio Kako He
kind of represents that cautious, standard scientific viewpoint right.
Speaker 2: Kakus stated that the probability of three aisles less being
alien in nature is quote not zero, but it's very small.
Speaker 1: And his core argument was that despite having a few anomalies,
it ultimately looks like an ordinary comet. Let's give that
skepticism the attention it deserves. Why is the default position
in astronomy always to assume natural phenomena even when things
look really strange. Well, it's really rooted in two things,
Okham's razor and historical precedent. Okham's razor is the principle
of the simplest explanation is usually the best one, and
the simplest explanation for a rock flying through space is
always just rock physics, not intelligence.
Speaker 2: Exactly to introduce a highly complex explanation like extraterrestrial intelligence
requires an extraordinary burden of proof. And secondly, history is
just littered with examples of unexplained astronomical phenomena that turned
out to be natural, just you know, unusual.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of pulsars. When Jocelyn Bell Burnell first discovered them,
the signals were so perfectly regular, they were so strange
they jokingly call the first one LGM one Little.
Speaker 2: Green Men one exactly. And pulsars turned out to be
rapidly rotating neutron stars, a bizarre but completely natural phenomenon,
not an alien beacon. So astronomers cite this history to
argue that we should just assume three I Atlas is
an unknown type of comet, maybe one with a different
composition from another star system that we just haven't cataloged yet.
Speaker 1: They argue that attributing these anomalies to aliens is premature,
maybe even intellectually lazy.
Speaker 2: And that's a powerful defense of the conservative view, it
really is. But Professor Loebe, who has been documenting this
object so rigorously, he directly challenged that idea that three
ilists only has a few anomalies.
Speaker 1: He certainly did. His rebuttal was very specific, and demanding.
He's listed at least twelve anomalies associated with this thing,
which he's documented in depth, and he basically called out
the scientific community.
Speaker 2: He did. He said, anyone claiming it's just an ordinary
comment must write a paper explaining all of these anomalies
quite professionally. You can't just hand wave away a dozen
pieces of contradictory data and call the minor quirks okay.
Speaker 1: So this brings us to a deeper dive into those anomalies.
We've talked a lot about the unsmeared jets, but let's
expand our view. What are the most convincing pieces of
evidence besides the jets that challenge the natural hypothesis. Well,
LoVa highlights two structural anomalies as being particularly compelling, but
we should look at a few to really appreciate the
full weight of the evidence. Let's start with the one
that's all about statistics. Anomaly a alignment with the planetary plane.
Remind us what the ecliptic plane is. Again.
Speaker 2: The ecliptic plane is basically the flat disc, the plane
on which all the major planets in our Solar system
orbit the Sun. It's like the galactic traffic lane.
Speaker 1: For us.
Speaker 2: Okay, now three atlas is an interstellar object. It came
from outside our system. An object arriving randomly from the
distant Milky Way should approach from a totally random vector
from high above or far below, or at some steep angle,
like a dart thrown arbitrarily at a dark board.
Speaker 1: But the observation is that three ils is lined up
with the plane of the planets from the beginning.
Speaker 2: The statistical improbability of that is immense. For a genuinely
random interstellar object. The chance of it entering our solar
system and aligning itself so neatly with our ecliptic plane
is just extremely low.
Speaker 1: Would suggests as trajectory wasn't random.
Speaker 2: It implies two possibilities. Really, Either we just won the
cosmic lottery and we're seeing an incredibly rare statistical fluke,
or there was some element of deliberate insertion or navigation.
I mean, if you were an extraterrestrial civilization sending probes
to invent instigate another star system, where would you aim.
Speaker 1: You'd aim for the planetary traffic lanes the ecliptic plane.
That's where all the interesting targets are Exactly.
Speaker 2: The alignment fits to technological hypothesis perfectly.
Speaker 1: Okay, I have to play devil's advocate here, though from
that conservative perspective, couldn't this just be an example of
survivorship bias? Ow So, well, if there are trillions of
intertellar objects flying through the galaxy, then statistically a few
of them have to randomly align with our ecliptic plane,
and we simply notice the ones that happen to be
aligned because they're easier to see or they pass closer
to us.
Speaker 2: That is a crucial counter argument, and it's a valid one. Yes,
statistically something will always align perfectly if you have a
big enough sample size. However, the issue here is that
three iatalysts isn't just aligned. It also has a dozen
other properties that are non standard.
Speaker 1: The anomalies are compounding.
Speaker 2: They're compounding. The conservative view would hold that if you
see a million random objects, the one that aligns is
just a coincidence. Argument is that when you've only observed
two major interstellar objects up close, Omua and this one,
and both of them display multiple non gravitational and structural
anomalies in combination with that alignment, the coincidence theory really
starts to stretch credulity. The data points just keep piling
up against the simplest explanation.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's look at the second major anomaly, which is
maybe the most shocking number we've discussed. So for anomaly B,
the massive size difference, this one is about the sheer
scale of the object. Lobe emphasizes that this is a
very big object, much more than we expect it, and
put that into context. He compared it to Umua, the
first interstellar object we really got to look at, and
he noted that previous objects like it were a million
times less mass. A million times Yeah, that's not just
a large commet. That implies it's a completely different class
of object altogether. If a typical comet is the size
of a small mountain, what on Earth is three ilis?
Speaker 2: Well, it means it's composition and its structure must be
fundamentally different. If this thing were a typical icy object
of that size, the solar heating would have produced a
massive blinding coma and a tail that would have been
visible to the naked eye for months.
Speaker 1: But that's not what we saw.
Speaker 2: No. The fact that it maintains these tightly controlled jets
and a relatively subtle presentation for its size suggests an
incredibly dense, robust structure that is not dominated by ice
or other volatile materials. It must be metallic, or at
the very least made of a far denser rock than
we typically see in commets.
Speaker 1: So the natural model requires a comet that is aligned
perfectly with their solar system, spins rapidly, yet somehow doesn't
smear its seven jets and is a million times more
massive than its siblings. It doesn't seem to be very volatile.
Speaker 2: It requires a significant number of cascading coincidences. Yes, and
we should briefly touch on just a couple of the
other anomalies on lobes list to really drive the point home.
For instance, the lack of expected.
Speaker 1: Volatiles what it's made of. Comets are defined by their ices. Yeah, water, ice,
carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, but early spectral analysis of three
itellis suggested a lack of the expected levels of these
really common combat materials. So if the jets aren't primarily
made of water or carbon compounds, what are they? That
raises huge questions about its chemical origin. And there was
another one about how it reflects light.
Speaker 2: It's unusual reflectivity. Yeah, the light signature, it gives off
as peculiar, suggesting a very atypical surface composition. Again, maybe
something metallic or highly robust, which is just inconsistent with
a fluffy, icy snowball model.
Speaker 1: So when you stack all of that together, the massive size,
the perfect alignment, the lack of smearing on the jets,
the weird chemical makeup, the technological hypothesis, it stops being
science fiction and starts becoming a necessary scientific consideration.
Speaker 2: It becomes an intellectual obligation. Look, Love is not out
there saying this is definitively an alien spacecraft. What he's
saying is the natural models fail, and they fail comprehensively. Therefore,
we must use science to rigorously investigate the next best
mechanic explanation, which happens to be controlled propulsion.
Speaker 1: And his consistent call for caution is still the main
message paramount.
Speaker 2: He says, let's wait and check what the subject is
in the coming weeks, rather than stay give the verdict already.
The goal is simply to explain the data fully, not
to confirm a pre existing bias for or against aliens.
This is the very essence of scientific inquiry. You follow
the data, no matter how strange a place it leads you.
Speaker 1: It's a powerful lesson in scientific humility and rigor. We're
looking at objects that force us to admit that our
models of the cosmos, especially when it comes to interstellar visitors,
are likely very, very incomplete. Okay, let's wrap this up.
This deep dive into comment three I outlasts has been well,
it's been a masterclass in forensic astronomy. We take these
initial observations and Professor Lobs analysis and we can really
distill them into three major takeaways that challenge what we
think we know.
Speaker 2: Right First, I think you have to internalize the coordination conflict.
The simple observation of seven then unsmeared tightly coordinated jets
on an object that's rotating every four hours that fundamentally
defies the standard model of passive commentary outgassing.
Speaker 1: If rotation should produce a spiral, a blur, and we
see coherence, a huge piece of scientific explanation is missing,
completely missing. Second takeaway, remember the power of the technological
hypothesis as a problem solver. The idea of directed control
thrusters is, strangely enough, the most elegant mechanical solution to
that problem of rotational compensation is the simplest solution to
the most complex problem.
Speaker 2: It is where the natural explanations fail because of physical constraints.
The concept of active propulsion resolves that coherence anomaly perfectly.
And third, you have to consider the statistical weight of
the anomalies.
Speaker 1: This isn't just one weird.
Speaker 2: Thing, not at all. The fact that three iedls is
a million times more massive than we expected, and that's
coupled with its near perfect alignment with our solar system's
ecliptic plane that pushes the boundaries of statistical improbability. And
when you combine those struck features with the strange jet
behavior and the odd chemical makeup, labeling it an ordinary
comment starts to feel like an act of faith, not
an act of science.
Speaker 1: And this whole saga it ties directly into the broader
search for techno signatures that the Galileo project is spearheading.
The value here is demonstrating that we need to be
actively documenting and challenging our own assumptions about what normal
even looks like in the cosmos.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, we can't let our preconceived notions stop us from
rigorously investigating truly anomalist data. The scientific impulse should be
the joy of a documented surprise. If we only ever
look for what we expect to find, we'll never find
the things that truly push the boundaries of our knowledge.
Speaker 1: The case of three id Lost forces us to look
beyond just ice and rock and ask if we're observing
a mechanism that implies intent. It does, and that leads
us to our final provocative thought for you to take
with you. Let's go back to that conservative view for
just a moment. Let's say that, against all these anomalies,
three i at Lyes eventually does to be entirely natural. Okay,
if future data reveals some incredibly complex, non standard commentary
physics that perfectly explains the coordinated, massive, non smeared structure,
what profound implication does that hold for our understanding of
the universe.
Speaker 2: Well, if nature, through just random stellar formation and chaotic forces,
can spontaneously create an object that perfectly mimics the behavior
and the structural elegance of a technological vessel, it would
mean that the natural processes of the cosmos are far
more capable, far more structured, and far more complex than
we ever imagine. We'd be revolutionizing physics, could revolutionize not
just the search for aliens, but the fundamental physics of
how planetary building blocks form in other star systems. So
in a way, it's a win win for profound discovery,
regardless of what the ultimate verdict is.
Speaker 1: We need those high resolution images to finally stop being processed.
Speaker 2: Indeed, we wait and we watch the skies.
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us for the deep dive. We
look forward to exploring the next frontier of knowledge with
you soon