Hold onto your telescopes, because October 29, 2025, marks the “acid test” for the mysterious interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS. NASA calls it a comet, but Harvard astrophysicist Dr. Avi Loeb isn’t so sure — he’s warning the world it could be an alien Trojan Horse, cruising past the Sun before potentially sending mini-probes toward Earth.
At 11:47 UT, 3I/ATLAS hits its closest point to the Sun at 1.36 AU (around 203 million km), perfectly positioned to either accelerate or decelerate if it’s a craft rather than cosmic ice. While we can’t watch it directly from Earth right now, Loeb’s team at the Galileo Project is monitoring for anything unusual in our atmosphere.
The object will swing near Venus on November 3 and become visible to ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer mission that same week. By December 19, it’ll be at its closest approach to Earth — a still safe 267 million km away — but the question looms: will it be dropping alien “gifts” for humanity this Christmas?
Loeb points to unusual nickel-to-iron ratios, potential artificial lights, and excess heat as signs it could be engineered. Critics call it sci-fi speculation, but the astrophysicist insists, “We’ll know the nature of 3I/ATLAS in the coming months… and hopefully, it won’t send us anything.”
So, space fans, keep your eyes on the sky. This isn’t your usual comet-watch — it could be the universe’s most mysterious delivery yet.
