Elon Musk LEAVES Joe Rogan SPEECHLESS Over 3I/ATLAS Alien Comet (FULL TIMELINE)

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]Are you paying attention at all to Threeey Atlas? Are you watching the comet?

[00:00:04]>> Yeah, whatever it is.

[00:00:06]>> No, it would like obliterate a continent type of thing. Um maybe maybe worse.

[00:00:11]>> Yeah, it'll probably kill most of human life.

[00:00:13]>> It'll be a very sort of heavy spaceship if you make it all out of nickel.

[00:00:16]>> Oh yeah.

[00:00:18]>> And [ __ ] huge. The size of Manhattan and all nickel. That's kind of nuts.

[00:00:21]>> Yeah, that's a heavy spaceship.

[00:00:23]>> That's a real problem if it hits.

[00:00:25]>> Uh yes. When Elon Musk warned that something far stranger than fiction might drift through our solar system, few paid attention. When Joe Rogan asked Musk point blank whether he'd been following three IA Atlas, Musk replied that if he ever had real evidence of aliens, he'd reveal it on Rogan's show.

[00:00:44]Listen closely to what he said. I mean, one thing I can say is like, look, I if if I was aware of any evidence of aliens, um you Joe, you have my word. I will come on your show and I will reveal it on the show.

[00:00:59]>> Okay.

[00:00:59]>> Yeah, >> that's a good deal.

[00:01:00]>> Yeah, it's pretty good. I'll believe you. Yeah, thank you. I I'll stick I I keep my you know, keep my promises. So, um >> All right. I'll hold you to that.

[00:01:07]>> Uh yeah, >> the thing about the three eye atlas is it's >> a name actually.

[00:01:12]>> Yeah, it's a third eye sounds like third eye or something.

[00:01:15]>> Yeah, it does. Three eye is third. It's only the third interstellar object that's detected.

[00:01:21]>> Okay.

[00:01:21]>> Yeah.

[00:01:24]through it on my ass.

[00:01:25]>> Yeah, it's fascinating. It's fascinating also because it's made almost entirely of nickel, whatever it is, and the only way that exists uh here is uh industrial alloys apparently.

[00:01:36]>> Um >> um No, there are there are >> there are definitely uh comets that and asteroids that are made primarily of nickel in.

[00:01:44]>> Yeah. So the the the places where um you mine nickel on earth is actually where there was an asteroid or comet that hit earth that was a nickel rich uh you know as nickel rich >> nickel rich rich deposit.

[00:01:57]>> Yeah that's that's that's it's coming.

[00:01:59]Those are from impact. You definitely didn't want to be there at the time because anything would have been obliterated.

[00:02:04]>> Um but that's that's where the the sources of nickel and cobalt are these days.

[00:02:08]>> Rogan then brings up something even stranger. reports that three eye atlas is made almost entirely of nickel. Musk immediately grounds the claim in known physics, explaining that earth's own nickel deposits come from ancient impacts.

[00:02:22]>> So this is a lobe. A few hours ago, the first hint of non-gravitational acceleration that something other than gravity is affecting its acceleration, meaning something is affecting its trajectory beyond gravity was indicated.

[00:02:33]So, it's mostly nickel, very little iron, which uh he was saying uh is on Earth only exists in alloys.

[00:02:42]>> It be it'll be a very sort of heavy spaceship if you make it all out of nickel.

[00:02:46]>> Oh, yeah.

[00:02:46]>> Um >> and [ __ ] huge. The size of Manhattan and all nickel. That's kind of nuts.

[00:02:51]>> Yeah, that's a heavy spaceship.

[00:02:52]>> That's a real problem if it hits.

[00:02:54]>> Uh yes. No, it would like obliterate a continent type of thing. Um maybe maybe worse.

[00:03:00]>> Probably kill most of human life. While headlines push speculation, Musk's comments hinted at something far stranger than headlines were willing to admit. And what he told Joe Rogan instantly changed the tone of the entire conversation, all of us.

[00:03:17]>> I don't know. It depends on what the the total mass is, but um there's I mean the thing is like in the fossil record there are um you know there's like arguably arguably five major extinction events.

[00:03:29]um like the biggest one of which is the Perine extinction uh where um almost all life was eliminated. That that actually occurred over several million several million years. Um the there's the Jurassic. I think Jurassic is I think that one's pretty definitively an asteroid. Um and um but there's but there's been five major extinction events but um but what they don't count are really the ones that merely take out a continent.

[00:03:54]>> So >> merely >> Yeah. cuz that that cuz those don't really show up on the fossil record, you know, >> right?

[00:03:59]>> Um so unless it's enough to cause a you know mass extinction event throughout Earth, it it doesn't show up, you know, in a fossil record that's uh 200 million years old. There have been many many impacts that would have sort of destroyed all life on you know, let's say half of North America or something like that. There many such impacts through the course of history.

[00:04:20]>> Yeah. And there's nothing we can do about it right now.

[00:04:23]>> Yeah. Yeah, there was one that um hits there was a one that hit Siberia and destroyed I think um few hundred square miles.

[00:04:31]>> Oh, that's the Tonguska.

[00:04:32]>> Yeah, that's the one from the 1920s, right?

[00:04:35]>> Yeah.

[00:04:35]>> Yeah. That's the one that coincides with that meteor that uh comet storm that we go through every June and every November that they think is responsible for that younger dus impact traveling at nearly 60 km/s. The object was first spotted by NASA's asteroid terrestrial impact last alert system Atlas in Chile on July 1st, 2025.

[00:04:59]Designated three Atlas, the name marks it as the third interstellar object ever observed, a traveler from beyond our solar neighborhood. At the moment of discovery, three Atlas was 4.5 astronomical units from the sun, roughly near Jupiter's orbit, and heading inward at incredible speed.

[00:05:19]Almost immediately, observatories across the world turned their telescopes toward it. The detection was more than a curiosity. It was a rare chance to study an interstellar body months before its closest approach. The last two such discoveries, Umamua in 2017 and two I/ Boros in 2019, were both spotted too late for detailed observation. The excitement grew when Harvard astrophysicist Avi Lobe, known for his bold hypothesis, published a paper on July 17th suggesting that three IA Atlas might represent alien technology, perhaps even a hostile probe. His team noted how its trajectory appeared unusually aligned with the ecliptic plane, the flat disc where most planets orbit. The odds of that alignment occurring naturally, they claimed, were about 1 in 500. The paper speculated that such a path would be ideal for an object attempting to enter orbit around the sun or study the inner planets.

[00:06:20]Initial size estimates based on reflected light placed three eye atlas at around 11 km wide, roughly the size of the asteroid believed to have ended the dinosaurs. Later analysis suggested it could be smaller but still large enough to command global attention. For Elon Musk and other space visionaries, discoveries like three Atlas serve as reminders of how little humanity understands about the universe it inhabits. Whether a comet, a fragment of alien technology, or something entirely unknown, the object's arrival has reignited one of science's oldest questions. What else is out there? And how close might it be already? A Manhattan-sized object made of dense metal is not a harmless sky visitor.

[00:07:07]Musk explained what a collision like that would mean. Not global extinction necessarily, but continent level devastation, the kind of event that destroys everything within thousands of kilometers, yet barely registers in the fossil record millions of years later.

[00:07:23]He reminded Rogan that Earth has seen countless continent killing impacts throughout its history. Five mass extinctions are officially recognized, but many more catastrophic events simply vanished from geological memory because they weren't worldwide. We've got some updates. Check out these new images that show three Atlas in a whole new light.

[00:07:46]Uh what's going on with this this situation? Where are these jets? Uh is streaming out? What is all this? Is it breaking up after possibly going behind our sun? a little confusing because this all comes after last week images showed the object with no tail. Weird. So, how did the object go from an anti-tail to a tail to a no tail uh to an anti-tail to to whatever it is?

[00:08:10]>> Seven bright, tightly focused jets shooting into space. Some of them stretching nearly a million km into the solar wind. And the transformation is confusing even seasoned astronomers.

[00:08:22]Harvard astronomer Avi Lobe tried to make sense of it. Here is what he said.

[00:08:26]>> There are two possibilities that we considered all along that these jets are naturally produced out of ice on the surface of a rock. And the second possibility is that they might be thrusters on the technological spacecraft. And so how do we tell the difference? Well, if it's a natural object, then we know the temperature on the surface of a rock given its distance from the sun. And that gives the characteristic speed of any volatiles that get sublimated and ejected from those pockets of ice. And so knowing the speed, we can see how far these jets go into the solar wind. We know the properties of the solar wind. And these jets appear to be some of them in the direction of the sun and they go a million kilometers away from the object.

[00:09:20]So knowing the properties the speed and the density of the solar wind we can infer how much mass is being carried by these jets. And I did the calculation and I found of the order of 5 billion tons of material. Lo broke the situation down to two possibilities. either three IA Atlas is naturally breaking apart or the jets we're seeing are the result of controlled thrust. He avoided speculation and focused strictly on physics. If the jets are natural, they would come from pockets of ice heating up and releasing gas. But his calculations showing nearly 5 billion tons of material being ejected don't match the estimated size of the nucleus.

[00:10:10]A natural object would need a surface almost 20 km wide, far larger than what telescopes have observed. That means it may have fractured into many pieces, exposing new surfaces that could produce slow, heavy jets. If so, fragments should start drifting away soon. Here is his take on it.

[00:10:29]>> Well, actually, we don't just see a tail. In the latest images, we see of order seven jets coming from the uh surface of of the central object. Uh some of them towards the sun, some of them away from the sun. What surprises me is that they are tightly cimated. Uh and that is surprising because the object is rotating. The last time we checked, it has a rotation period of only 16 hours. The length of these jets is a million kilometers. You would expect that the material making up these jets had to go across that distance over a period of a month given the typical speed of outflows from comets and uh during a month it would have been smeared by the rotation of the object.

[00:11:16]So then the question is what is going on? Uh one possibility is that it's only the pockets of ice facing the sun that are getting warmed up. But we see jets going on the opposite direction away from the sun. Another possibility is that perhaps the object broke up and what we see is the trail of material from the fragments flying out. But the problem is that we got the latest image and it looks like a single object in the middle. So we don't know what is going on. Of course, it's possible also that uh these are thrusters from a technological object that are used to maneuver uh or navigate and obviously in that case they will maintain their orientation. The latest images leaked through observatories worldwide show something almost contradictory.

[00:12:05]Instead of fading or fragmenting, three Atlas now appears with a restored halo and seven sharply focused jets. Some pointing toward the sun, others away from it. What makes this bizarre is that the jets remain tightly coordinated despite the object rotating roughly every 14 to 16 hours. Under normal physics, material should smear into wide arcs as it spins. Instead, the jets look stable, almost controlled, as if the outflow keeps resetting to the same orientation.

[00:12:41]That behavior is hard to reconcile with a natural comet. Even Moaku, who leans strongly toward natural explanations, admitted the chance of an artificial origin is not zero.

[00:12:55]Lo challenged anyone claiming it's ordinary to write a paper explaining all anomalies, something no one has done yet, moving too fast to be captured by the sun's gravity and showing no controlled acceleration. Observations from Hubble and the James Web Space Telescope recorded a faint coma and a developing tail consistent with natural cometary activity, not propulsion.

[00:13:20]Despite mounting data pointing to a comet, misinformation spread faster than scientific updates. Influencers and commentators amplified Lo's speculative angle, often misquing him entirely.

[00:13:33]Within weeks, millions believed that a hostile alien probe was entering the solar system.

[00:13:40]Scientists from NASA and the European Space Agency issued clarifying statements emphasizing the object's natural origin and encouraging the public to wait for verified data. Elon Musk briefly addressed the media frenzy, commenting that humanity's curiosity often turns to fear when faced with the unknown. His remark captured the moment's tension, a blend of fascination, skepticism, and anxiety.

[00:14:07]While Loe's openness to extraordinary possibilities fueled the discussion, it also underscored a critical issue. How easily science can be distorted in the age of instant information, the NASA silence.

[00:14:21]>> It's not like nobody is working at NASA because the government has been shut down for the past couple of weeks. So, I just I'm sorry. I don't buy it. Do you think it's suspicious that NASA hasn't made an effort to put these photos out there? It's strange because the principal investigator of this camera called High-Rise on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter uh is not affiliated with NASA. He is at the University of Arizona and obviously they can still analyze the data and release it scientifically. There is no need for a press release. The European Space Agency already released their data which was much worse quality. Uh because you know that's the way things are in science. You make the the data available to other scientists so they can look into it.

[00:15:09]>> A visitor from beyond behaving in ways that defy our science. This object, later named three eye atlas, doesn't follow the predictable dance of asteroids or comets. It moves like something that doesn't belong here. Musk has often said, "If something strange enters our solar system, we should pay attention, not dismiss it." That statement now feels like a directive.

[00:15:33]Things have gotten very very interesting. According to astronomers, three-ey atlas has all kinds of surprises. We've only seen a handful of of blurry shots that look like a tail is kind of starting to form. There's the unusual chemical signatures. It's producing way more nickel than iron, and scientists don't really know why. As telescopes across Earth pivoted toward the unfamiliar glow between Mars and Jupiter, the data revealed an object so unusual that it forced scientists to question their assumptions about what counts as natural. Three arrived quietly without spectacle. But what it represents is monumental. a real interstellar messenger faster than any probe humanity has launched, older than our sun and possibly carrying the chemical fingerprints of another civilization's origin. Musk's warnings were never about fear. They were about readiness. The readiness to look up and understand that the universe may be speaking. When three eyelas was first detected, the astronomical community mobilized quickly. But the real storm began with Harvard astrophysicist Avi's paper released just two weeks after the discovery. It suggested that the object could be an artificial construct, potentially alien in origin and possibly even on a reconnaissance trajectory through the inner solar system. The study highlighted several peculiarities.

[00:16:59]The object's precise alignment with the ecliptic plane, its unusual speed, and its close approaches to Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. These details, Loe argued, could theoretically indicate purposeful navigation. The media seized on one phrase, potentially technological and hostile, and headlines exploded worldwide.

[00:17:20]>> The first of these, MUA MUA discovered with telescopes in Hawaii, that's a Hawaiian word for first scout, basically. So that as it came through the solar system, we said all right, we know what trajectory an object with that speed and that direction coming in should take as it rounds the sun. Then there was the actual trajectory which was different like whoa whoa. Well, comets have a way of outgassing when they get near the sun, and that puts an extra little sort of force on their arc of motion that has them move in ways that are not purely gravitational. And that's true for all comets. So, we thought maybe that's outgassing. But suppose you look and there's no outging. So, what's going on?

[00:18:14]No tail, a glow at the front like headlights. A size estimate of 20 km across, twice the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Musk highlights this detail constantly. Objects that big don't just drop in once a decade.

[00:18:30]Statistically, it's once every 10,000 years. What hooks Musk is the precision.

[00:18:36]3 I/ a TLAS travels almost exactly in the plane of the planets coming within striking distance of Mars, Venus, and Jupiter. That kind of alignment doesn't happen by chance. It looks like steering.

[00:18:49]>> Do you hear about that [ __ ] object that's hurdling towards Earth at like 130,000 mph?

[00:18:54]>> No, that might solve all our problems.

[00:18:55]>> Some intergalactic object that's There's this guy Avi Loe. He's a professor at Harvard that believes it might be an alien probe.

[00:19:04]Wow.

[00:19:05]>> And he was talking about the odds of this thing being in the trae trajectory that it is entering into our solar system in a direct path with Earth. The odds are extremely low. And at the place where it's doing it, it's when the Earth is the opposite side of the sun. So, it's coming from behind the sun and it's uh so it makes it difficult to detect >> and that this object is in a direct line to come to Earth in 2027.

[00:19:32]Do they have a trajectory of where it's going to land?

[00:19:35]>> I don't think they totally know that yet. I think they're trying to calculate whether or not it's actually going to hit Earth or come near Earth or pass by Earth or what it, you know, what it is.

[00:19:44]>> It started with a strange visitor. An object so massive that even veteran astronomers were stunned. But this new arrival was different. Data suggested it was nearly 100 times larger, moving with precision no natural object should possess. NASA labeled it a new pair of comets. Yet, the readings told another story, and soon the internet exploded.

[00:20:09]Within minutes, the post went viral.

[00:20:11]Newsrooms scrambled, conspiracy channels lit up, and panic began to spread.

[00:20:16]>> And any sort of slight news of it being a alien mother [ __ ] people are going to jump on. And I thought, well, let's just try to approach this video bit a bit more or skeptical approach, okay? Because look, there's no I really want this to be an alien mother ship.

[00:20:39]I'm telling you, there's a huge part of me that wants this to be an alien mother ship, but I have to ground myself because the other part of me is saying, "No, Ben, come on. It's more than likely just a weird anomaly." On October 5th, 2025, NASA's live feed abruptly stopped, coinciding with the government shutdown that had already disrupted multiple federal services, including NASA updates. And apparently, yes, there was a NASA related live stream, or at least one featuring NASA data observations of the comet's activity focused on its recent closest approach to Mars around October 3rd, 2025. This was captured using instruments from NASA's Mars Orbiters and rovers such as the Mars Reconnaissance and Orbiter MRO. This interruption sparked widespread speculation with many wondering if there was a hidden agenda behind the feed's sudden loss, especially given the timing. Elon Musk, a major advocate for space exploration, has been outspoken about the need for transparency in space missions. He has often questioned why such important data would be withheld from the public. Musk's SpaceX, which operates with a similar commitment to openness, emphasizes the importance of sharing scientific information quickly.

[00:21:59]As Musk has noted in the past, the mystery surrounding extraterrestrial events like this sparks excitement and curiosity, fueling further speculation.

[00:22:10]Have a look at this. A very important thing happened recently a couple of days ago for astronomy um for science. The threeey atlas was passing over Mars. So it was a perfect prime opportunity to point every single camera at this third interstellar object coming into our solar system. Okay, it was perfect opportunity to get the information, the data that we needed and we did. However, something very strange happened.

[00:22:42]The live feed for NASA just cut off and the I was watching videos about this thing, right? And I was like, surely no, it it didn't. No, it didn't. Really, it did it. Like, really? The most important time to get information and the and the feed is cut off. Well, they probably got the information, but the feed to us cut off.

[00:23:06]>> On July 1st, 2025, a groundbreaking discovery was made by the NASA funded Atlas survey when a speck of light was observed moving against the backdrop of distant stars. Discovered using a telescope located in Rio Hortado, Chile, following the discovery of Umamua in 2017 and Borisov in 2019.

[00:23:29]Initial observations revealed that 3 IA Atlas was traveling at an extraordinary velocity of approximately 135,000 mph.

[00:23:38]An exceptionally high speed for an object at this distance from the sun.

[00:23:43]With its unique origin and high velocity 3 Atlas offers a once-ina-lifetime opportunity to study an interstellar object up close, providing insights into the formation of comets and planets in other star systems. Right now it's hard to say how big this object is because being active the brightness that we see is partially due to the size of the object but also uh it's partially due to the activity and so we cannot really pinpoint the nucleus size directly. We have to better understand how active this object is and then we can uh we can refine the size estimate and get a good idea. It's moving at a velocity of about 135,000 mph. So it's going really fast for that distance from the sun. This is really exceptional. You have to be an interstellar object to be going that fast at that distance from the sun.

[00:24:30]>> As the third interstellar object ever identified, this comet offers an exceptional opportunity to study material from outside our solar system.

[00:24:39]Something Musk himself has emphasized in his quest to explore beyond Earth.

[00:24:44]During interviews, Musk frequently returns to the question that has baffled scientists for decades. Where are the aliens? His take on this question delves deep into the Fairmy paradox. the conundrum of why with the vast number of stars and planets we have yet to find evidence of extraterrestrial life. Let's hear about aliens by Elon himself. Where are the aliens?

[00:25:08]>> Where are the aliens?

[00:25:09]>> That's one of the like the fmy paradox question. Um, a lot of people have asked me if I've seen any evidence of aliens and I I haven't, which is kind of concerning cuz then I'd probably prefer to at least have seen some archaeological evidence of aliens. Um to the best of my knowledge there is no not aware of any evidence of aliens if they're out there. They're very subtle.

[00:25:30]We might just be the only consciousness at least in the galaxy. And if if you look at say the history of Earth for us to believe the archaeological record, Earth is about 4 and a half billion years old. Civilization as measured from the first writing.

[00:25:42]>> Musk has admitted that he hasn't seen concrete evidence of aliens which he finds concerning. His belief is that if extraterrestrial life exists, it is subtle and perhaps even more advanced than human civilization.

[00:25:57]The vastness of the universe and the complexity of life evolution lead him to wonder if humanity might be the only conscious species in the galaxy. He points out that civilization as we know it has been around for only a small fraction of Earth's 4.5 billionyear history. The gap between the formation of Earth and the emergence of advanced life feels significant, raising doubts about the existence of advanced civilizations elsewhere.

[00:26:26]In Musk's view, space exploration is critical not only for advancing humanity, but for survival, moving at an impressive 135,000 mph makes it a unique target for study. Objects traveling at such speeds are typically interstellar in nature, unlike other solar system objects. For Musk, who has often spoken about the need to expand humanity's presence in space, this discovery emphasizes the potential to learn from celestial objects that have traveled across the vast distances of space.

[00:26:59]While NASA's updates were paused, the absence of their feed led to increased curiosity over the true nature of the comet's behavior. Adding fuel to the fire, Dr. Avi Loe, a prominent Harvard scientist, pointed out several anomalies. Loe's observations about the comet's composition and trajectory have deepened the mystery.

[00:27:20]>> It did maneuver. Uh it deviated from the path that we would have expected it to go through if its trajectory was cuted by gravity alone. And the amount of boost to its velocity was equivalent to a a jet carrying 5 billion tons of matter that would give it a recoil. Now, as of this morning, some observers noticed that it has a sequence, a set of jets around it, more than seven, some headed towards the sun, some away from the sun. It's a spectacular view that we have right now after it passed closest to the sun on October 29th. Lo described the shift as equivalent to a jet engine pushing five billion tons of matter, a mind-bending amount of energy for something drifting through space. Even more intriguing, new observations show a ring of at least seven jets bursting from the object, some pointed toward the sun, others away. Scientists say this pattern isn't typical of any known comet or asteroid. And then came the color change. After three, I Atlas passed closest to the sun on October 29th. It turned bluer, brighter than ever, five times more luminous than before its solar encounter. Normally, an object heating up near the sun grows redder, not bluer. Yet, Threei Atlas broke the rules again, leaving experts puzzled and eager for answers. Lo suggests something deeper may be at play. We expected it to dim or shed material, he noted. But there's no commentary tale, only jets.

[00:28:50]>> 3i Atlas came closest to Mars within 30 million km. And the high-res camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took several images of it. These are the highest resolution images we have. Three times better in spatial resolution about 30 kilometers per pixel compared to the previous best image which was the Hubble Space Telescope image and the that was a day after the government shut down took over NASA and uh we haven't gotten the data and my point is that the politics of the day should not sabotage science.

[00:29:29]they have the data they should share it with scientists. They can wait with any uh press release but for the scientists to analyze the data uh that would serve an important purpose of helping us design the future observations of this object. I should also say that uh the news yesterday was that this object came closest to the sun and it received a huge amount of heat from the sun. The latest report indicates that it became extremely bright, much more than expected for familiar comets.

[00:30:01]>> What does that tell you?

[00:30:02]>> Well, that is not the most unusual fact.

[00:30:05]It actually is bluer than the sun. And a blue color usually indicates very high temperatures if it's the light is emitted by some hot surface. The lobe explained that on October 2nd, 3II Atlas passed close enough to Mars for the high-rise camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to capture images with 30 km per pixel resolution, far sharper than the previous Hubble observations. And that's when China's TMU1 orbiter did the impossible. It photographed it. Let's hear from the expert of Beijing Aerospace.

[00:30:37]>> This ancient wanderer, billions of years old, passed the closest to Mars on October the 3rd. and Chinese scientists captured several incredible snapshots.

[00:30:50]Before the official imaging, the ground team carried out a series of rehearsals.

[00:30:55]Two days in advance, we conducted child shots of three eye atlas to both check his orbit and fine-tune TM1's highresolution camera. After the test runs on October the 1st and 2nd, the orbiter captured the official images on October the 3rd when three eye atlas reached its closest point to Mars. Using data from the earlier tests, we perfectly optimized the camera to achieve the final stunning shots.

[00:31:23]Capturing three eye atlas from 29 million km away with an estimated diameter of 15 km is like photographing an object 0.5 mm in diameter 1 km away.

[00:31:37]The precision needed pointing the camera is extremely high.

[00:31:41]>> Engineers had just weeks to prepare after astronomers first spotted the object in July at magnitude 6.7. Threeey atlas was so faint it was practically invisible to the naked eye. Imagine trying to photograph a sesame seed from a full kilometer away. That's how precise the targeting had to be. To pull it off, the ground team conducted 2 days of rehearsal imaging on October 1st and 2nd, fine-tuning the highresolution camera for the final moment. On October 3rd, the orbiter nailed it, capturing the first official close-up shots of the object as it swept past Mars. The object called threeey/atlas was first thought to be a harmless passer by. The first sign something had changed came from a place Musk probably wasn't watching. I um analyzed the data from 4,000 observations of 3i Atlas over the past 4.5 months. So all of the data from 227 observatories on Earth shows no deviation from a trajectory shaped by gravity alone. And that means that despite the push on the object, it must be extremely massive to resist it. It doesn't care about it. And so I obtained a minimum mass of 33 billion tons for this object, which is at least a thousand times more than the previous interstellar comet that we saw uh back in 2019. So the question arises as to how come this is such a giant object comparable to Manhattan Island when the previous one you know was so much smaller. The previous one was the size of a football field. This one is the size of Manhattan Island. It's quite a difference and you would expect many more of the small ones before you see a big one like that.

[00:33:28]>> When the numbers changed inside Harvard Center for Astrophysics, the warning arrived quietly at 2:13 in the morning.

[00:33:35]A routine orbital calculation for three I/Atlas finished running. The numbers look different. The closest approach to Mars had been cut by nearly 400,000 kilometers compared to the week before.

[00:33:47]Not a direct hit, but now well inside the orbit of Phobus, Mars' innermost moon. The margin for error had collapsed from millions of kilometers down to less than the distance between New York and Los Angeles. Graduate students fed fresh data from the James Webb Space Telescope into Monte Carlo simulations. Each new observation nudged the trajectory closer. By afternoon, a draft press release circulated. Potential Mars intersection urgent review. Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loe's team pulled in dynamicists from across campus. They stared at coariance matrices and uncertainty ellipses that kept shrinking. 2 days before the public alert, Harvard's internal risk models showed the probability of a Mars encounter rising by a factor of 10. The absolute odds stayed low, but the trend was unmistakable. Unless a major outgassing event kicked three eye/atlas off course, the comet would pass dangerously close. Close enough that a single unpredictable pulse could tip the balance. Going public wasn't taken lightly. But with the margin shrinking and NASA already watching, silence carried more risk than alarm. By the time the press release hit, the world's largest space agency had already requested Harvard's full orbital data set. What started as an academic curiosity was about to become a planetary defense scenario >> on us for purposes either benign or malevolent. It's not the first time astrophysicist Avi Lobe has suggested the object has alien origins. He came on this show to say so a while back, even saying the object could be on a mission to release quote mini probes that could invade Earth.

[00:35:18]>> NASA locks on. Professor Loe had already stirred controversy by suggesting three I/Atlas might not be a natural object at all, but something engineered, a probe of alien origin. Most dismissed the idea. Yet, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, the handoff triggered something rarely seen outside near Earth asteroid alerts. Trajectory analysts, who normally track rocks that might threaten our planet, turned full attention to this interstellar intruder.

[00:35:45]Fresh data from Hubble and ground stations poured in, forcing another revision. The projected safety margin had shrunk to something more familiar to lunar missions. As of midepptember, the best fit solution placed three I/Atlas within 1.95 million km of Mars, less than six times the gap between Earth and its moon. That number alone wouldn't trigger alarms, but the approach vector did. Retrograde, high inclination, crossing Mars' orbit at 87 km/s. At that speed, even a glancing blow would unleash energy on a scale never witnessed by human instruments. Every new data point trimmed the uncertainty ellipse. Every Monte Carlo run nudged the probability curve closer to the threshold used by NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office. The math was unavoidable. 3II/Atlas covers the distance between Earth and the Moon in less than 80 minutes. Every hour it travels, gravitational tugs from the sun, Jupiter, and Mars adjust its path by micrometers per second. Tiny changes that become enormous across tens of millions of kilometers. What NASA found next made the threat even harder to explain. So that's a puzzling fact.

[00:36:54]Also, today there was a report about the nickel coming out of this object without much iron. And again, that is a very unusual property of it. And also we know that the object came along a path that is aligned with the plane of the planets around the sun. And that's highly unusual because the chance for that happening at random is one in 500. A pulse that shouldn't exist. When astronomers first noticed the pattern, they assumed it was an instrument glitch. Every 17 minutes, like clockwork, the tail of three I/Atlas erupted in a measured pulse of gas. Time series data from Gemini South in Chile confirmed it. Arrays in Hawaii saw it.

[00:37:36]17 minutes precise to within seconds, repeating for days. The effect showed up in brightness curves, a sawtooth pattern rising and falling with each eruption.

[00:37:44]Spectrographs revealed surges of cyanogen and carbon monoxide, the usual markers of cometary outgassing. The timing was uncanny. Ordinary comets vent gas when sunlight hits fresh ice. Those eruptions are messy, triggered by cracks, surface spin, uneven heating.

[00:38:00]With three I/Atlas, the pulses arrive with metronomic regularity as if governed by an internal clock. Observers at the very large telescope track the plume's direction. Each burst aligns with the comet's changing velocity vector. Over a single night, the cumulative thrust from these eruptions nudges the object's path by measurable amounts. Mission engineers have run simulations since the first risk models crossed their desks. The consensus, nothing built by humans could survive inside the immediate blast zone. Debris thrown into orbit would create an expanding cloud of rock and dust, threatening satellites for months or years. The loss of orbital infrastructure would [ __ ] climate monitoring, surface mapping, and relay communications for future missions. For engineers who spent decades designing and operating these machines, the prospect is devastating. When fragments of comet Shoemaker Levy 9 slammed into Jupiter in 1994, the scars they left were the size of Earth. Hubble and ground telescopes captured the event. It transformed planetary defense from theory into policy. But the tools that emerged in the decades since were all built with Earth in mind. Three Eye Atlas defies physics again. But just when scientists thought the Fibonacci signal was the peak of the mystery, Three Eye Atlas reappeared and everything got stranger. After vanishing behind the sun, the interstellar visitor returned, not weaker, but five times brighter and glowing an intense electric blue. It wasn't supposed to do that.

[00:39:27]Objects heated by the sun usually reen as they lose energy. This one did the opposite. Before we proceed, let's see the latest input from Dr. Lobe. And here's the real shocker. There's still no tail.

[00:39:39]>> A look at this. This is three Atlas. You know how the last time we talked about it, it went behind the sun, then it got brighter, then it got bluer, then it started to go faster. non-gravitational acceleration. Well, guess what? We just got new images of it. And to add some more stranges to the threeey atlas saga because like I don't want to overhype this, but yeah, you see that's a comet.

[00:39:59]It does not have a very big, very noticeable commentary tail. That's what we were thinking we were going to see.

[00:40:07]So, let's get straight over to Harvard astronomer, Professor Avi Loe, the worldrenowned expert on all these things, all things interstellar. Uh, professor, the last time we spoke, which was like the day before yesterday, you were saying that when it went behind the sun, the natural explanation for the non-gravitational acceleration and the thrust might be because it burned off a bunch of chemicals or something and that was giving it the thrust to the tune of like 13% and we would see a humongous tail maybe. What is going on? Yeah, that's very surprising because there should have been a a very massive cloud of gas and dust around it based on what we know about comets. In fact, we see other comets in the solar system that have a beautiful tail away from the sun behind them. Lemon is an excellent example. But in our case of three Atlas, it looks like a fuzzy ball of light.

[00:40:58]Even after it passed through perihelion, it was heated by 770 watts per square meter. We know that the previous plume of gas was mostly carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide ices can sublimate at a much lower temperature than water ice.

[00:41:15]>> Every known comet after being blasted by sunlight releases jets of vapor and dust that form a trailing plume. But three atlas look nothing like that. Instead of the elegant curve of a comet's tail, telescopes saw a compact ball of light, bright, stable, and eerily clean. At its closest pass to the sun, it endured 770 watts per square meter of solar radiation, more than enough to vaporize volatile ice instantly. Scientists expected a huge explosion of gas and dust, something dramatic, maybe even catastrophic. Instead, 3i Atlas just kept going, accelerating off its predicted path with no visible cause.

[00:41:54]That's what researchers call non-gravitational acceleration, motion that can't be explained by gravity alone. The leading natural theory suggests that fragments of carbon dioxide ice could be sublimating and vaporizing too quickly to leave a visible trail. But that still doesn't explain the precision or why the object's plume remains invisible while its brightness increases. Now experts are cautiously admitting what they once avoided.

[00:42:20]>> There is a lot of misinformation. You know some people said I invented three eye atlas. This object to distract attention from the Epstein files.

[00:42:27]>> Is that what people are saying?

[00:42:29]>> Yeah. And I said look this object is the size of Manhattan Island. It's at 4 and a half times the Earth sun separation.

[00:42:36]If I was able to put it out there you know I would be more powerful than the Pope. And because we're talking about a giant object that you can see from any place on Earth, you know, you can buy online a telescope that half a meter in size that will allow you to see it. It's out there. It cannot be faked.

[00:42:54]>> Y3 IA Atlas does not behave like a normal comet. A Lobo's conversation with Joe Rogan revolved around one core claim. Three, IA Atlas shows too many anomalies to be treated as an ordinary interstellar comet. Rogan opened by noting how many scientists initially brushed off Loe's concerns, assuming the object was routine. But as new data arrived, Loe's early observations began to match what researchers were seeing.

[00:43:21]Here is what he said.

[00:43:22]>> Triay Atlas is a million times more massive, at least a million times more massive than MUA. And I immediately as it was discovered, you know, it was July 1st and my wife asked me to go on vacation to Aruba 2 days later. And uh as I was going on the plane and as I arrived there, I realized, wait, that doesn't make sense cuz we should have seen millions of uh omuamas before we saw this one, you know, it's so big. And I also realized there is not enough rocky material per unit volume in interstellar space to deliver such a giant rock into the inner solar system within a period of a decade. You would expect it at the very optimistic scenario where you package all the material into objects that are 5 km in diameter. You would imagine once per 10,000 years. So I wrote immediately a scientific paper. My wife was not happy that you know on our vacation I was sitting on my computer but I just couldn't resist it.

[00:44:15]>> Lo explained this through the idea of high impact low probability events. Most scientific discoveries barely affect everyday life but contact with non-human technology would transform global finance politics and scientific priorities. Intelligence agencies plan for unlikely scenarios because their consequences can be huge. And Lobe argued that astronomy should approach anomalies with the same seriousness.

[00:44:41]Three eye atlas immediately stood out due to its extreme size, at least a million times more massive than Umam Mua. If natural, an object that large should appear roughly once every 10,000 years. Yet, it arrived less than a decade after Uma Mua, raising a statistical warning flag. Here is what he further added.

[00:45:01]>> Maybe it was targeting the inner source.

[00:45:04]That was my solution to say you know one way out of this dilemma of why is it so big is if it was targeting the inner solar system by design and indeed the trajectory is aligned with the plane of the planets around the sun to within 5°.

[00:45:18]The chance for that at random is 1 in 500. Okay. and it's moving in a retrograde trajectory opposite to the motion of the planets which is ideal for it to release mini probes that will get into the planets. It gets close to Mars.

[00:45:32]It gets close to Jupiter. It goes on the opposite side of the sun uh relative to Earth when it's closest to the sun. And that's the time when a spacecraft could do a maneuver to take advantage of the sun's gravitational assist. You know, all of these are interesting indications that may imply that some intelligence designed the trajectory. So I had one sentence at the end of the paper saying maybe the trajectory was designed >> why key anomalies still remain unresolved. When new public statements suggested that three IATA atlas might be behaving like a typical comet. Professor Avi Loe made it clear that the latest information did not resolve the core scientific puzzles. Here is what he said.

[00:46:14]>> You've been telling me for months now that you think this might be an alien object. Is this a disappointment? No, because there wasn't much new information released. In fact, we knew most of the details that were mentioned today from scientific sharing of data from the Hubble Space Telescope, the web space telescope. And um what they uncovered was the skin of the object basically that some Isis and perhaps some dust that evaporates when the sun illuminates that surface. Even if you consider a spacecraft that travels through the cold interstellar medium, it would accumulate over time and dust on it that would be released and you don't need large quantities to explain that data. You are not supposed to judge a book by its cover.

[00:47:04]>> Are you saying it could still be an alien object?

[00:47:07]>> Well, I'm saying the data that was shared today did not provide us with new information. And in fact, the NASA officials did not address the basic puzzles about this object.

[00:47:19]>> In his view, the data released so far offered surface level observations, what he called dead skin from the object without addressing the deeper inconsistencies that first drew scientific attention. Lo pointed out that the reported material, including traces of dust and ices, is entirely compatible with any spacecraft or interstellar object traveling through space for long periods. Over millions of years, even a technological probe would accumulate particles on its exterior. He emphasized that this does not tell us anything conclusive about the object's true nature. His stance remained firm.

[00:47:55]You cannot judge the object's origin based on superficial debris. To keep things realistic, scientists say it might still have a natural cause, like gas escaping through tiny cracks inside the object. But the problem remains.

[00:48:09]Nature doesn't usually produce clean timing, consistent orientation, or repeating thrust-like bursts. Musk's seriousness in discussing the object makes more sense now. As he said, Earth has seen countless continent level impacts, but none with signatures quite like this. Scientists decode three atlas behavior. Have a look at the latest images of the three eye atlas. The universe just handed us another riddle, and this one is firing jets. Fresh imaging of threeey atlas, the Manhattan-sized interstellar object slicing past our solar system, has revealed something no one expected.

[00:48:48]Structured thermal plumes firing in repeating patterns almost as if under intentional control.

[00:48:55]The data comes from a new technique called thermal gradient imaging, capable of detecting tiny heat variations across fastmoving objects when applied to three atlas. The results stunned researchers.

[00:49:10]Instead of random outgassing the kind seen in ordinary comets, the object released narrow pulsed jets. They were evenly spaced, repeated, directional, almost engineered. Scientists are careful with their words, but they are not hiding their curiosity. Fresh thermal gradient images of three IATAS have revealed jets firing in clean repeating patterns, not random bursts, not chaotic outging. structured thermal plumes, evenly spaced and directional, almost as if under control. Researchers highlight its unusually smooth surface, perfect axial stability, lack of dust tail, and refusal to fragment. All behaviors that don't match typical comets. Whatever threeey atlas is, the combination of Musk's reaction, and these new images has turned it into the most intriguing object in the sky.

[00:50:01]Astronomers have captured its unusually smooth surface, its perfect axial stability, and its refusal to behave like any comet we've ever tracked.

[00:50:11]No dust tail, no chaotic spin, no natural fragmentation. Instead, it moved with eerie uniformity as if following a flight plan.

[00:50:22]And now, these new heat maps raise the stakes again. Researchers say the jets could theoretically be natural, the result of buried volatiles venting through narrow channels, but the clean patterns, the timing, the directional force, these resemble maneuvering bursts, not geological accidents. Some researchers argue that the absence of a tail supports earlier claims that it may be composed of unusually dense material, possibly nickel rich, making it behave less like the comets we see in our solar system. NASA has yet to release the highest resolution image of the object, a high-rise capture from October 2nd, citing complications from the government shutdown. That missing data has only amplified speculation, especially among astronomers eager to study the object's surface changes.

[00:51:11]>> That's why it's different. It's different from other comets. Comets in our solar system, for example, are maybe only 3 to 4 billion years old. This one is a very old comet and as a consequence it has plenty of time to accumulate garbage and that's one of the characteristics of this comet. It has nickel iron content which is different from the average comet.

[00:51:35]>> Dr. Mo Kaku believes the tail loss could simply indicate that the object is extremely old, possibly around 7 billion years, giving it time to accumulate exotic materials and behave differently from younger comets. But even Kaku acknowledges the mystery. And that passing moment became the perfect setup for what came next. Because days later, Avi didn't just revisit the topic. He escalated it.

[00:51:59]>> Well, what we see are seven jets coming out of these objects. More than seven actually, after it passed close to the sun on October 29th. And we can see that some of these jets are pointed towards the sun and they penetrate over a million kilometers through the solar wind. We know the properties the density and speed of the solar wind. So we can figure out that for a natural comet with the characteristic outflow speed of you know these jets that come off pockets of ice on a natural comet. Given that speed we can tell that there is a lot of mass carried by these jets so that they can penetrate through the solar wind about 5 billion tons. And in order to get that much mass out of ice we need a large surface area of an object. And it turns out that this it's a surface area of an object that is at least 20 km in diameter, much bigger than the original estimate for the size of the object.

[00:53:01]>> Three eye atlas's immense mass, its improbable ecliptic aligned arrival, and its nickel richch ironpore composition resembling engineered alloys. Lo argued none of these were answered. Citing Conan Doyle, he warned against mistaking assumptions for facts. The case isn't closed. If anything, the mystery has deepened.

[00:53:22]>> A simple detail is to figure out where the jets are coming from. Because if they come from ice that is sublimated by sunlight, we know the characteristic speed of the volatiles that come out of that and we know how much mass will be evaporated and the composition of that.

[00:53:38]So if we find that we can explain all of these components with a natural origin, then the case is closed. However, if we find a much larger speed than expected from a natural object, it might be that this this is a technological signature.

[00:53:53]There would be a flood of data that would tell us what this object is. But let's wait and see.

[00:53:58]>> The critical factor, he explained, is understanding the jets emerging from its surface. If the jets originate from natural ices vaporizing under sunlight, their speed, mass, and composition should match wellestablished comet behavior. Scientists already know the typical velocity of gas released through sublimation and they can calculate how much mass should be lost as the object heats up. If observations show that the jets behave exactly like natural cometary outgassing, the explanation becomes straightforward. Three Atlas is behaving as a large icy comet would. In that case, Loe said the case is closed.

[00:54:36]Lo argued that the data could have been processed and released independently since the high-rise camera's principal investigator operates out of the University of Arizona, not directly under NASA's administrative control. The European Space Agency, meanwhile, had already released its lower resolution images, making NASA's silence appear even more unusual. The Hubble images that were released showed a distinct glow extending toward the sun, a feature confirmed by a Chilean groundbased observatory.

[00:55:07]The structure appeared elongated 10 times longer than it was wide, prompting further debate about whether the phenomenon reflected natural outging or something more complex. While most astrophysicists attributed it to the direction of solar radiation pressure and the alignment of dust particles, others, including Loe, argued that withholding the high-rise data only fueled suspicion. When questioned in a televised interview, Lobe expressed frustration. Either NASA was not functional due to the shutdown or there was a reason for withholding the images.

[00:55:43]He mentioned eight unresolved anomalies already identified in three IA Atlas data, chemical, optical, and dynamical irregularities that defied easy classification.

[00:55:54]He claimed to have briefed members of Congress, and suggested that the White House should be informed, especially if the object's true nature deviated from natural expectations. Many outlets simplified Loe's cautious speculation into sensational claims. Harvard physicist says alien spacecraft approaching Earth. The nuance was lost.

[00:56:17]Lo repeatedly clarified that his paper wasn't proof of alien technology, but an invitation to keep unconventional explanations open until the evidence ruled them out. His position was one of scientific inclusivity rather than certainty. The public response was overwhelming. Social media posts and videos claimed three Atlas was slowing down, changing direction, or communicating. None of this aligned with observed data.

[00:56:45]>> You floated the possibility that three Atlas is uh alien technology in order to distract us from the Epstein files.

[00:56:54]My response to that is go to Amazon right now and purchase a half a meter telescope because that would allow you to see the object in the sky. I cannot really fake it. It's not something I can create with a Jewish laser. Uh and because it's so far away, it's like four times the Earth's sun separation. And the Hubble Space Telescope, the web telescope are looking at it in the context of three eye atlas. This is the third interstellar object discovered on July 1st, 2025. And what was special about it? First of all, the brightness was so large that if you were to assume it's a solid object, it had to have a diameter of 20 km. That's a bigger than Manhattan Island, twice as big as the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. Um, and it's just extremely rare. Okay, so I calculated, well, first of all, there should have been hundreds of thousands of moa sized object that was just the size of a football field, 100 m or so.

[00:57:56]As three IA Atlas continues its journey out of the solar system after its closest approach to the sun, the scientific community, including figures like Musk, who champion space exploration, sees it as a once-ina-lifetime opportunity. The data collected will expand our knowledge of planetary formation and help improve our ability to track future interstellar visitors, advancing humanity's understanding of the cosmos. As Threei Atlas continues its path through the solar system, the scientific community, bolstered by figures like Elon Musk, who championed the pursuit of knowledge, sees a rare opportunity to study an interstellar comet up close. Musk amplifies this, warning that without an international plan, humanity could face an unexamined, uncontrolled encounter.

[00:58:43]His SpaceX network, Starlink satellites, deep space sensors, and the upcoming Starship flights gives him leverage no private citizen has ever held.

[00:58:54]Independent realtime sky coverage. For Elon, it's about who controls the narrative and the data when an object too large, too bright, and too perfectly timed crosses the inner solar system.

[00:59:07]NASA asks for patience. Musk calls for transparency. He leaves the hook hanging. If governments won't watch, SpaceX will. Musk's larger message is stark. If an alien craft can cross interstellar space and operate here, humanity must act as one, not in fragments. This encounter marks a step closer to unraveling the universe's secrets, paving the way for future discoveries that will continue to push the boundaries of human understanding.

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