1-in-500 cosmic coincidence? Scientist says 3I/ATLAS could be millions of times bigger than 2I/Borisov, only if...

NASA’s SPHEREx space observatory has noticed a cloud of carbon dioxide (CO2) around 3I/ATLAS, the interstellar object racing towards the inner solar system. The observations were made between August 8–12, and Harvard scientist Avi Loeb has an interesting theory about it. He has been claiming that this object is not natural and has been sent by extraterrestrial beings to probe Earth and other planets. He wrote in a blog post that SPHEREx noticed "a mass loss rate of about 70 kilograms per second" and "no water (H2O) cloud was detected." Loeb added that the NASA report shows a "lack of a bright water gas coma", which has confused scientists since 3I/ATLAS was "not too far outside the Solar system’s 'water ice line” at 2.5 AU" when the observatory made the observations. He admits that even though H2O is not present in gas form, "the reflected spectrum from the surface of 3I/ATLAS" showed a "mix of water and carbon dioxide ices combined with organics."

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NASA observatory data suggests 3I/ATLAS is extremely large

He once again argued that the latest images by SPHEREx do not resolve the "dust coma" contention, and the sunlight scattered around it is compact and reflecting off the dust on it. He cited the data collected by the NASA observatory to suggest that 3I/ATLAS has a large nucleus with a diameter of 46 kilometres. Loeb says that if this object is a space rock, then it is a million times bigger than the previous interstellar comet 2I/Borisov. However, as per his calculations, this is not possible. Based on his projections about the amount of rocky material present per unit volume in interstellar space, humans should have by now found at least a million objects about the size of 2I/Borisov before a 46-kilometre object.

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Reddening in reflection shows 3I/ATLAS is large

In the same blog post, Loeb once again asserted that 3I/ATLAS is targeting the inner solar system "by technological design", implying that it has been sent by an intelligent civilisation capable of interstellar travel. Loeb pointed to its trajectory in contrast to the orbit of the planets around the Sun and implied that the chances of such a random orientation happening are only one in 500. The Hubble Space Telescope has also observed a reddening in the spectrum of reflected sunlight from 3I/ATLAS and no tail, which means there is not much dust around it. Meanwhile, the reddening proves that this interstellar object is large. A COs layer that is only a millimetre-thick is being removed from the object, which he says shows that a thin layer of dust is sufficient to maintain this cloud of COs gas around it. This cloud is hiding something, and it is not a comet, Loeb says.