It’s possible. If you do not think it’s possible? Prove it.
Is it probable? No, but damn, it’s getting more and more probable as we bop along.
The earliest point at which we, earthlings, might have seen maneuvering, emissions, course changes etc? May 7th, 2025 at with point 3i/Atlas was 6.4 AU from the sun
Deceleration during the observed arc from 6.4 AU inward would show up as non-gravitational acceleration in the trajectory data.
Activity, including emissions like nickel and CO2, was detected as early as 6.4 AU in May 2025 pre-discovery images, so stopping deceleration beyond that would avoid observation of thrust effects.
Observation systems like ATLAS detect objects up to magnitude 19-20, and for 3I/ATLAS, pre-discovery at 6.4 AU was at the detection limit due to its activity.
Btw, 6.4 AU is about 594,900,000 miles / 957,400,000 km; further out than Jupiter.
If you assume The Ship has been traveling at the same speed as it was when first observed, 140,000 mph or 61km/s? It’s almost certainly not a ship as we would think of it, even a generation ship.
Why? If you go back along the path that 3i/Atlas traveled to get here, the NEAREST star is a Binary Red flare star 32 Light years away.
At 61km/s that trip would take 154,000 years.
Nope. I just can’t see any biological form of life setting out for a trip that would take 154000 years.
Sure, that leaves Artificial lifeforms, and possibly non-intelligent space-born lifeforms (SpaceWorms). Both of those are too scary and too boring at the same time.
Luckily we don’t have to limit our guesses to that SLOOOOOW trip. Based on what we know and have seen we can speed up the trip.
What we have seen is an anti-tail, nearly pure nickel emissions and CO2 emissions; in my opinion and making my best guess I’d say this indicates a hybrid uCat co2 thruster drive system.
A μCat is a type of electric propulsion system that uses a plasma discharge to generate thrust.
Nickel cathode arc thrusters function by creating a vacuum arc between a cathode and an anode, which ablates or erodes a small amount of the solid Nickel cathode material. The ablated material forms a high-velocity plasma that is accelerated to generate thrust; if you feed CO2 into that plasma, it creates even more thrust.
This by the way would not be a good drive system, it would kinda suck. BUT, if you have 4 conditions
Lots of electricity
Lots of Nickel
Lots of CO2
not a lot of other resources
well yeah, a hybrid uCat would work. Note I don’t have a guess as to where the electricity would come from but it wouldn’t be THAT hard. A bunch of radioactive material of nearly any type will work.
So we have a space drive system. I’ve been looking at interstellar travel for a few decades, and for multiple reasons (some of the good) an asteroid ship likes to travel no faster than .3c or 30% of lightspeed. Ok, some reasons: minimal time dilation, so you can talk to your home base; you need very little shielding from interstellar debris; and you can effectively ignore Einstein when it comes to energy requirements to change velocity.
With a ship traveling at .3c from a star 32 light years away the trip takes around 107 years. Big difference.
That star system is AU Microscopii. This system is notable for having 3 or more Exoplanets, and for being a possible member of a Trinary star system. It’s unusual because of its regular flaring activity… which makes me nervous when we take into account the CME that hit 3i/atlas when it got to Sol.
So. 3i/Atlas could very possibly be an interstellar ship; with a trip time of 107 years? Humanoid inhabitants are also possible.
I have to admit I’m hoping it’s just a weird Comet.
My hands hurt. Later!
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