Top all-time · #1243
Avi Loeb
Personal blog · avi-loeb.medium.comscience
Avi Loeb's personal blog at avi-loeb.medium.com covers science. Since 2022, 56 different Hacker News readers have linked it 67 times, most often “Is the Interstellar Object 3I/Atlas Alien Technology?”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (14) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Avi Loeb's Medium posts on interstellar objects 'Oumuamua and 3I/ATLAS, and his IM1 spherule expedition diary. Commenters mostly cite them as speculative claims, often with amusement.
- Recommended for · 1 comments
- One commenter calls a Loeb Medium article good, saying it explains how he intends to verify whether the spherules could be a possibility.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 14 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Is the Interstellar Object 3I/Atlas Alien Technology?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-07-17
- The IM1 Spherules from the Pacific Ocean Have Extrasolar Composition3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-08-29
- Post Perihelion Data on 3I/Atlas2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-11-05
- The Interstellar Path to Prosperity2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-09-23
- An Anomalous Wire at the Site of the First Interstellar Meteor2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-06-16
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-08-30
- Does 3I/Atlas Generate Its Own Light? (Avi Loeb)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-08-18
- /starting-the-analysis-of-spherules-from-the-interstellar-expedition-2bc608d2d7ce2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-07-09
- The Blind Date of Mars with 3I/Atlas in a Month2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-09-02
What Hacker News says?
> It also means that No, it doesn't mean that. What makes 'Oumuamua special is not the fact that we didn't see interstellar objects before. It's rather the fact that 'Oumuamua has highly unusual and hard to explain properties. Avi Loeb: > ‘Oumuamua exhibited a non-gravitational acceleration of 4.92 ± 0.16 × 10^⁻6 m/s² that decreased proportionally to 1/r², where r represents the heliocentric distance, corresponding…
Comment linking /scientific-paradigm-resistance-evidence-from-the-oumuamua-debate-and-cross-disciplinary-cases-c5a4c341a355
on “Astronomers race to study interstellar interloper”Submitted Galileo Project now fully funded for expedition to study an interstellar meteor as a story · 137 points
HN discussionRelated to this is Loeb's proposal to nudge the Juno spacecraft, currently orbiting Jupiter and soon facing EOL, into the path of 3I/Atlas to try to scan it and snap some pictures. I doubt it has enough fuel left, but I hope they're looking into it. https://avi-loeb.medium.com/how-close-can-the-juno-spacecraf...
Comment linking /how-close-can-the-juno-spacecraft-get-to-the-interstellar-object-3i-atlas-66996354d3ff
on “Is the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS alien technology? [pdf]”Submitted Superficial Toxicity Is the Enemy of Curiosity-Driven Innovation in Science as a story · 27 points
HN discussionHe discussed that in the previous article... https://avi-loeb.medium.com/low-hanging-fruits-of-extraterre...
Comment linking /low-hanging-fruits-of-extraterrestrial-intelligence-9ef0e8ec401
on “Galileo Project now fully funded for expedition to study an interstellar meteor”Submitted Avi Loeb: Is 3I/Atlas Our Turing Test by a Superior Alien Intelligence? as a story · 17 points
HN discussionWhile it would be cool if it were alien technology[1], it looks like an ancient comet? [1]: https://avi-loeb.medium.com/is-the-interstellar-object-3i-at...
Comment linking /is-the-interstellar-object-3i-atlas-alien-technology-b59ccc17b2e3
on “First Hubble telescope images of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS”Submitted Political Violence Makes No Sense as a story · 10 points
HN discussionFor the fans of the genre, some more speculation by the master speculator himself: https://avi-loeb.medium.com/post-perihelion-data-on-3i-atlas...
Comment linking /post-perihelion-data-on-3i-atlas-3d1e72be2bb4
on “3I/ATLAS shows perihelion burst and radial-only non-gravitational acceleration”Submitted Was the "Wow Signal" Emitted from 3I/Atlas? as a story · 8 points
HN discussionDon't worry, Avi Loeb is on it. https://avi-loeb.medium.com/3i-atlas-rapidly-brightens-and-g... "Does it employ a power source that is hotter than the Sun?" Sigh.
Comment linking /3i-atlas-rapidly-brightens-and-gets-bluer-than-the-sun-near-perihelion-3bf100df8390
on “Rapid Brightening of 3I/Atlas Ahead of Perihelion”Submitted Intercepting 3I/Atlas at Its Closest Approach to Jupiter with Juno Spacecraft as a story · 8 points
HN discussionAnother recent post by him was discussing that it might be emitting it's own light: https://avi-loeb.medium.com/does-3i-atlas-generate-its-own-l... I feel like these are fun thought experiments.
Comment linking /does-3i-atlas-generate-its-own-light-e9775594afc5
on “Avi Loeb: Is 3I/Atlas Our Turing Test by a Superior Alien Intelligence?”Submitted The Scientific Revolution of Interstellar Objects as a story · 6 points
HN discussionAvi Loeb is an interesting scientist. I read a longer article about him that gave some more background about his work [1]. While he is famous for going on podcasts and making wild claims about objects being signs of alien intelligence, the actual hard science that he's doing is interesting. E.g, this expedition he managed to get funding to recover these extrasolar particles. The clickbaity pop media says that this i…
Comment linking /
on “Discovery of Spherules of Likely Extrasolar Composition in the Pacific Ocean [pdf]”Submitted First Evidence for a Non-Gravitational Acceleration of 3I/Atlas at Perihelion as a story · 6 points
HN discussionhttps://avi-loeb.medium.com/preliminary-anomalies-of-3i-atla... > The simplest hypothesis is that 3I/ATLAS is a comet and we are missing the spectral features of its gaseous coma because of its large distance from Earth. However, in case future data ..... I can't find the post unfortunately.
Comment linking /preliminary-anomalies-of-3i-atlas-79339f64a39f
on “Interstellar Visitor Zipping Through Solar System Could Be Hostile Probe”Submitted Is the Interstellar Object 3I/Atlas Alien Technology? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThis guy completely lost his marbles [1]. Sean Carroll interviewed him [2] a few years ago for his podcast and I don't recall hearing any extremely outlandish claims in that episode. After that, however... [1] https://avi-loeb.medium.com/starting-the-analysis-of-spherul... [2] https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2021/01/25/131-...
Comment linking /starting-the-analysis-of-spherules-from-the-interstellar-expedition-2bc608d2d7ce
on “A Harvard Professor Became the World’s Leading Alien Hunter”Submitted Oumuamua Was Not a Hydrogen-Water Iceberg as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThis article is late to the party. I would hardly call SETI leading edge alien detection tech today. Our best bet would be to look at our recent interstellar visitor 3I/Atlas and to use other modern instruments to detect remnants or signatures of past intelligent activity. It's very likely given the age of the universe and the number of known habitable zone planets that other life forms did evolve and live there (or…
Comment linking /
on “In the late 1800s alien 'engineers' altered our world forever”Submitted Is the Interstellar Object 3I/Atlas Alien Technology? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionHe has made no such claim, he simply maintains it as a possibility. Here’s a good medium article from Avi himself discussing that possibility and exactly how he intends to verify whether or not it actually is a possibility: https://avi-loeb.medium.com/starting-the-analysis-of-spherul...
Comment linking /starting-the-analysis-of-spherules-from-the-interstellar-expedition-2bc608d2d7ce
on “Physicist who found spherical meteor fragments claims they are alien”Submitted How to Distinguish Extraterrestrial Spacecraft from Interstellar Rocks? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionFun link dump: * harvard & aliens & crackpots: a disambiguation of Avi Loeb by acollierastro (2022) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY985qzn7oI&t=5s * Critique of arXiv submission 2308.15623, "Discovery of Spherules of Likely Extrasolar Composition in the Pacific Ocean Site of the CNEOS 2014-01-08 (IM1) Bolide", by A. Loeb et al by Steve Desch, Alan Jackson https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.07699 * The IM1 Spherules from t…
Comment linking /reconstructing-the-first-interstellar-meteor-im1-923c1bb37c2a
on “Harvard astronomer's "alien spherules" are industrial pollutants”Submitted Are We at Logarithmic Midpoint of Extraterrestrial Technological Civilizations? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionHere is the paper linked in the piece https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/Interstellar_Expedition.p... Note: That is not the Avi Loeb paper, but it is reported to have been submitted about his work. A diary of that research trip is here https://avi-loeb.medium.com/the-im1-spherules-from-the-pacif... Related Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNEOS_2014-01-08
Comment linking /the-im1-spherules-from-the-pacific-ocean-have-extrasolar-composition-f025cb03dec6
on “Metallic spheres on Pacific floor are interstellar, Harvard professor finds”Submitted The New Interstellar Object 3I/Atlas Is Smaller or Rarer Than It Looks as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Kim Kardashian is welcome to join my Research Team on 3I/ATLAS as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Acid Test of 3I/Atlas at Perihelion as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
