In this late-October 2025 live stream, Billy Carson brings back Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb for an update on 3I/ATLAS, the third interstellar object ever found, and then gives his own reading: that the object may be artificial, may even carry passengers, and that NASA's delay in releasing Mars-orbit photos of it looked like a cover-up. Loeb lays out the anomalies he sees and the test that would settle the question; the cover-up idea is Carson's alone, offered after Loeb had left the stream.
The topic matters because 3I/ATLAS is a rare natural laboratory. Only three objects from another star system have ever been caught passing through ours, and this one was watched by a wider range of telescopes and spacecraft than either earlier visitor. The broadcast was recorded two days after the object's closest pass to the Sun and during the US government shutdown, when NASA's images from Mars had not yet been released. That timing gave the photo cover-up question its edge, and the later public record answers it directly.
Watch the video
What the video covers
Are we alone (from about 4:25)
Carson opens with his case that life is common: countless galaxies, stars and planets, and organisms on Earth such as extremophiles that thrive around volcanic vents and in acid. He calls extremophiles a recent discovery; in fact they have been studied since the 1960s and 1970s. His wider point, that humans are newcomers on a cosmic time scale, frames the stream.
Why Loeb speaks out (from about 11:40)
Loeb joins and explains his approach: science should be humble, and anomalies, evidence that does not fit expectations, are how scientists learn something new. He says many colleagues decide answers in advance, and he describes the Galileo Project, which he founded to collect new sky data from its own observatories.
'Oumuamua, the first interstellar visitor (from about 15:36)
Loeb recaps 'Oumuamua, found in 2017. It showed no visible coma of gas or dust, its light curve suggested a flat shape, and it was pushed away from the Sun by a force beyond gravity. He proposed it might be technological; colleagues argued it was a kind of rock no one had seen before. His reply to them: "That's what a cave dweller would say about a cell phone."
3I/ATLAS: size, mass and orbit (from about 16:50)
Interstellar objects, Loeb explains, are identified by speeds too high to be bound to the Sun. 3I/ATLAS was discovered on July 1, 2025, by the ATLAS survey telescope in Chile. He states a lower limit of roughly 5 kilometres for its diameter, about the size of Manhattan island, and a mass of at least 33 billion tons, and argues that so large a rock arriving from interstellar space is statistically unexpected, since many small objects should have been seen first. He adds that its path lies within about 5 degrees of the plane of the planets, and runs through its schedule: close to Mars in early October (October 3; he says October 2), closest to Earth on December 19, and past Jupiter on March 16, 2026.
The anomaly list (from about 19:28)
Loeb says the object has nine anomalies and names several. It brightened faster than any known comet as it neared the Sun around October 29. Some observatories found it bluer than the Sun. Nickel was detected coming off it with very little iron, which he compares to industrial nickel alloys. A glow extended toward the Sun in July and August, about ten times longer than wide, like a jet. And, reported the day before the stream, its path had begun to deviate from gravity alone. He offers a clear test: if that push comes from evaporating ice, a very massive cloud of gas should appear in the coming month; if it does not, it may be something else.
The radio-signal coincidence and what comes next (from about 24:17)
Loeb notes a coincidence: 3I/ATLAS arrived from within about nine degrees of the direction of the 1977 Wow! radio signal, which he puts at a 0.6 percent chance. He says radio astronomers agreed to listen and that NASA's Juno spacecraft at Jupiter has an antenna that could, though no transmission had been reported. He closes on stakes: confirmed alien technology would be "a matter of international security," and he hopes it would push humanity toward cooperation.
Carson's own hypothesis (from about 34:20)
After Loeb leaves, Carson returns to the size comparison and speculates openly. If 'Oumuamua was a probe, he reasons, something the size of Manhattan is too large for a probe and might be crewed, holding perhaps hundreds of thousands of beings. He frames this carefully: "I'm not saying these are facts, but it's interesting to consider."
The delayed Mars photos (from about 37:53)
Carson then raises the question he says he forgot to put to Loeb. Citing a Loeb blog post, he says NASA had high-resolution images of the object from a Mars orbiter (he names the Mars Global Surveyor; the camera in question was HiRISE on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) but would not release them, citing the government shutdown. Carson calls this a cover-up and predicts that when the images appear, they will have been altered so the object will "look like giant rocks." He labels it his personal opinion.
Faster-than-light travel and 1977 (from about 40:36)
Carson closes with his strongest claim: that 3I/ATLAS sent the Wow! signal in 1977. If the source was about 1,800 light-years away and the object is here by 2025, he argues, it would need faster-than-light travel. He ties 1977 to a childhood sighting over his backyard that year, which set him on his path. He also says it slowed to 140 miles a second; the measured inbound speed was about 58 km/s, roughly 36 miles per second.
Key takeaways
- Avi Loeb treats 3I/ATLAS as an open question and lists anomalies (rapid brightening, blue colour, nickel, a sunward jet, non-gravitational acceleration) that he says deserve scrutiny.
- Loeb proposed his own test: a massive gas cloud would mean a comet; the absence of one would point elsewhere.
- The cover-up framing is Billy Carson's suspicion at the time of the stream, not a claim Loeb made on air.
- NASA released its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image and data from about a dozen missions after the shutdown, in November 2025, and the HiRISE image shows a fuzzy coma.
- No trajectory links 3I/ATLAS to the Wow! signal source; the overlap is a rough coincidence of sky direction.
Billy Carson's reading
Carson's position is that 3I/ATLAS is highly unlikely to be a rock. He reads it as an artificial object built by a superior intelligence, possibly crewed, and he believes it is connected to the 1977 Wow! signal. His reasoning runs on scale and coincidence: an object this large makes little sense as an unmanned probe, and its arrival direction lines up with a signal detected the year of his own formative sighting. On the photos, his suspicion was that a delay justified by the shutdown hid something, and that the images would be edited before release. He repeatedly flags all of this as hypothesis and opinion, saying viewers "might have a different opinion and that's okay."
The briefing breakdown of what NASA said about 3I/ATLAS and Carson's reaction picks up the story once the images were out, and his reading of 3I/ATLAS alongside the Hopi Blue and Red Kachina prophecy places the object inside a much older frame. For the precedent Loeb keeps returning to, see the explainer on 'Oumuamua and the alien probe debate.
What mainstream scholarship says
NASA, ESA and the IAU's Minor Planet Center classify 3I/ATLAS as a comet, designated C/2025 N1 (ATLAS). Hubble images from July 2025 put the nucleus between about 0.32 and 5.6 km across, which is an upper limit, not the 5 km lower limit Loeb cited. On August 6, 2025, the James Webb Space Telescope found a coma unusually rich in carbon dioxide, alongside water, carbon monoxide and carbonyl sulfide. The object passed perihelion on October 29, 2025, at about 1.36 AU, came no closer to Earth than about 1.8 AU (some 270 million km) on December 19, and heads past Jupiter on March 16, 2026. Age estimates suggest it may be older than the Solar System.
Most astronomers attribute each of Loeb's anomalies to cometary activity. A coronagraph study by Qicheng Zhang and Karl Battams using SOHO, GOES-19 and STEREO reported the rapid brightening and bluish colour near perihelion as consistent with gas emission. Nickel vapour, detected with ESO's Very Large Telescope, has also been reported in Solar System comets. The non-gravitational acceleration is explained by outgassing, the same jet-like push that ordinary comets show, and the active coma and multiple tails seen after perihelion are what the test Loeb proposed predicts for a comet.
On the photos, the record is plain. ESA's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter imaged the object from Mars in early October 2025. The HiRISE image whose release was delayed was taken on October 2 from about 30 million km away, at roughly 30 km per pixel, too coarse to resolve a nucleus a few kilometres wide. After the shutdown ended, NASA released images from about a dozen missions on November 19, 2025, including HiRISE, which shows a fuzzy coma. Officials said the object behaves like a comet and that no technosignatures had been seen. The delay tracked the shutdown, and the images came out once it ended.
Watch, read and go deeper
For the radio coincidence at the centre of Carson's theory, read the Wow! signal mystery. For the policy side of unidentified objects, see the UAP hearings explained, 2017 to 2026. The full stream is also available as an audio episode on the 4biddenknowledge Podcast, and 4BK TV carries Richard Dolan's UFO Chronicles for longer-form investigation.
Frequently asked questions
What is 3I/ATLAS?
3I/ATLAS is the third known interstellar object, after 'Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019. The NASA-funded ATLAS survey telescope in Chile discovered it on July 1, 2025. NASA, ESA and the Minor Planet Center classify it as a comet on a path out of the Solar System.
What does Avi Loeb say about 3I/ATLAS?
Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb argues that 3I/ATLAS shows anomalies, such as rapid brightening, an unusual colour and nickel emission, that keep the possibility of technology open. He also proposed a test: a massive gas cloud would confirm a comet. Most astronomers explain each anomaly through ordinary cometary outgassing.
Did NASA hide photos of 3I/ATLAS?
NASA delayed releasing its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE image during the autumn 2025 government shutdown, which Billy Carson read at the time as a possible cover-up. The image, taken on October 2, 2025, was released on November 19, 2025, with data from about a dozen other missions. It shows a fuzzy coma, and NASA said it had seen no technosignatures.
Is 3I/ATLAS linked to the 1977 Wow signal?
Loeb notes that 3I/ATLAS arrived from within about nine degrees of the Wow! signal's direction, which he calls a 0.6 percent chance. The roughly 1,800 light-year figure Carson uses comes from a 2022 estimate of a candidate star for the signal's source. No trajectory connects 3I/ATLAS to that star, and the link remains Carson's hypothesis.
Sources mentioned
In the video, Loeb cites the ATLAS survey discovery and roughly 4,000 position measurements from 227 observatories that he analysed with two colleagues; Carson cites Loeb's blog post on the delayed Mars images. Both discuss the 1977 Wow! signal (recorded by Ohio State University's Big Ear radio telescope), and Loeb mentions NASA's Juno mission at Jupiter. Standard references include NASA's 3I/ATLAS fact pages and November 19, 2025, briefing, the University of Arizona's HiRISE image release, David Jewitt and colleagues' 2025 Hubble size analysis, and Loeb's book Extraterrestrial (2021) on 'Oumuamua.
