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August 7, 2025 • 9 mins

Tune in here to this Thursday's edition of the Brett Winterble Show! 

Brett dives into an intriguing and unconventional topic: a mysterious interstellar object reportedly headed toward our solar system. Referencing the work of Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, Brett explores the possibility that the object—known as “3I Atlas”—may be alien technology rather than just a large comet. Loeb’s analysis highlights the object's unusual size, speed, and precisely timed trajectory, which suggest it may not be of natural origin. According to Loeb, the object will make a close approach to the sun on October 29th, potentially using the sun’s gravity for a maneuver.

Brett shares his fascination, joking that the object might be responding to Earth's century of radio transmissions—or even his long-standing jokes about space. He discusses the potential of using NASA’s Juno spacecraft to intercept the object in 2026 and encourages listeners to stay curious. What starts as a space oddity turns into a fun and thought-provoking segment blending science, humor, and speculation.

Listen here for all of this and more on The Brett Winterble Show!

For more from Brett Winterble check out his YouTube channel.

 

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Okay, last week I brought up a topic that was
near and dear to me. And I know that you're
thinking that, you know I'm not being straight up with you,
But I am being straight up with you. I promise you.
I don't ever like make stuff up and put it
on the air or anything like that. So you guys
might remember last week and the week before that, I

(00:36):
made a reference to this thing that nobody knows what
it is, but it's coming our way. I don't know.
I know if you guys are thinking I'm crazy, I've
got I got a report that I took off of
a source, and it's about the thing that's out way

(00:57):
out in outer space, and it's coming at us. I mean,
I mean literally, it's coming at us. There's a guy
named Avi Lobe. Avi Lobe he is a genius. He
is a scientist at Harvard University. He's like the head
of the research facility there. I know I went after

(01:18):
Harvard in the first segment, but you gotta hear this.
So this guy explains what's going to happen. And this
is not.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
East of the Rockies.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
West of the Rockies. It's no, no, none of this
George Norris stuff. Okay, I promise you this is This
is a guy who's staking his reputation on this, and
you have to hear this. I'm not gonna hype it anymore.
I'm just gonna play it. I might play it again
in the in the third hour, in case you want
another helping of this. This is pretty freaky. I'm kind

(01:51):
of intrigued. I think I don't hate space anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
It's like that, Go, Professor Low, your recent paper suggests
that this might actually be alien technology rather than just
another comet. What exactly about the speed, the trajectory, the
behavior leads you to consider this as a possibility.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
Well, first, it's relatively bright for its distance, implying that
if it's a solid object, it has to be twenty
kilometers in diameter. That's twice as big as the giant
asteroid that killed the dinosaurs sixty six million years ago,
and the previous objects we saw from interstellar space were
only hundreds of meters in size. So there is just

(02:34):
not enough rocky material in interstellar space to provide us
with a twenty kilometer rock that appears once per decade.
But more importantly, the trajectory is very unusual. It's aligned
with the orbit of the Earth around the Sun, and
the chance of that happening is one in five hundred

(02:57):
and then it also the timing of its arrival. He
is very fine tuned because it comes very close to Jupiter,
to Mars and to Venus, and the chance of that
happening is one in twenty thousand. And Moreover, it's moving
in the opposite direction to the motion of the Earth
around the Sun, and when it will come closest to

(03:19):
the Sun, the Earth would be on the opposite side,
so we won't be able to observe it. That's the
point in time when it can do a maneuver with
the aid of the Sun's gravity, and that will happen
on October twenty ninth. And I already heard from a
fan that he is trading options against the volatility of

(03:41):
the markets, the stock market with an expiration date because
of the October twenty ninth. Because if it's alien tech,
you know, that would change the future in quite dramatic way.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
It will have a huge so many questions. So I mean,
if I have this correct, I believe you've proposed using
a Richter scale before to assess such objects as zero
means this is totally of natural origin. Ten means this
is clearly engineered. Based on what we know about this
object and what you're observing, what number would you give
it now.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
We don't have enough data. It depends how much weight
you give to the unusual orbit. The trajectory is extremely
rare and fine tuned, and depending on that, how much
are you assigned to that? You will give it a
rank that is somewhere in the middle. It's difficult to
assess it this time, but we will get The good

(04:39):
news is we will get much more better data in
the coming months. And you know, the fun of doing
science is that you can ask questions at first and
then answer them with data, and we don't need to
have an opinion, especially in a blind date like this one.
You know, all bets are off. This visitor came from

(05:01):
interstellar space, and it's possible that you know it targeted
the Inner Solar System for a technological reason.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
From what you're describing, this sounds like one of the
worst blind dates potentially I've ever heard of. Do we
have the capabilities right now to track, intercept, and even
respond to something non human entering our Solar system as
soon as October?

Speaker 3 (05:23):
Well, it will be moving relative to Earth at nearly
one hundred kilometers per second when it's closest to the Sun.
Simply because it moves in the opposite direction to the
motion of the Earth, there is no way for us
for us to send a rocket that will intercept with
it from Earth. However, I wrote a paper last week

(05:45):
that there is actually a spacecraft that is orbiting Jupiter.
It's called Juno, and it's the end of its life.
The plan was to send it straight into Jupiter in
September twenty twenty five because the mission has ended. But

(06:06):
what I realized is that if instead of giving it
a push so that it ends its life inside Jupiter,
you'll give it a push away from Jupiter. If the
push is sufficient sufficient, then it will actually intercept the
orbit of three I atlas, this new object in March

(06:26):
twenty six, when it will come very close to Jupiter.
And on Tuesday this week, just a few days ago,
I had a phone call from a congresswoman, Anna Paulina Luna,
who asked me for an update about three I Atlas,
and I mentioned this to her, and she wrote a
letter to NASA on Thursday last week, just two days ago,

(06:54):
in which she encourages NASA to look into the possibility
of using JUNO as a probe of three I Atlas.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
I really appreciate that update, and I hope you keep
us updated.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
On Okay, So, I so you know, I've I've taken
a lot of shots at space. Like I I've said
for pretty much the entirety of my broadcast career that
you know, I think space is not a place that
I'd ever want to go. Space is just it's just
a dead vacuum. It's all that kind of stuff. And
then I was having a conversation with my with my

(07:27):
wife this this late this morning, and she posited a theory.
Her theory is, you know, for one hundred years plus,
we've been sending stuff out into space, recordings like we've had,
We've had broadcasts for the last one hundred years going
out right going out into the who knows where all

(07:50):
that stuff's going, right, But it keeps traveling, it keeps traveling.
It's they're picking up all this sort of stuff. And
it's possible that you know, maybe maybe they've been listening
to us a little bit and they may have taken
umbrage with the things I've said about space. And then

(08:10):
now they're coming to like, you know, maybe they took
it literally, not figuratively, and maybe now they're coming to
check us out. Because here's the thing, he says, October
twenty ninth is when this thing comes around. But he says,
if you can get on the other side of it,

(08:32):
you're gonna have this thing with the March of twenty
twenty six. My birthday is March twenty eighth. They might
be coming to deliver me some goods, or they made
me coming because I because I because I tried to

(08:53):
give them, tried to give them some problems. Specifically, they
may be coming to see me because I'm trying to
give them the ketchup smoothie
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