This is an AI Free Zone: AI isn't all bad. Large language models are good writers with access to vast stores of data. There's still no substitute for a human being with decades of space weather forecasting experience. This website is 100% human.
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QUIET WITH A CHANCE OF X-FLARES: Solar activity is low, with no strong flares observed for more than a week. However, there are currently 10 sunspot groups on the solar disk, and at least one of them has an unstable 'beta-gamma' magnetic field. NOAA forecasters say there is a 10% chance that an X-flare will break the quiet during the next 24 hours. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text
IS COMET 3I/ATLAS ALIEN TECHNOLOGY? Carl Sagan famously said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.” But he never said we couldn't talk about them. In that spirit, we review a new draft paper by Avi Loeb and colleagues, which—without extraordinary proof—asks whether interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS might be a spaceship.
Avi Loeb is a Harvard astronomy professor who became a household name in 2017 after the discovery of ‘Oumuamua, the first known interstellar object to pass through our solar system. While most scientists offered natural explanations, Loeb made headlines by suggesting it could be an artificial probe from an alien civilization.
This artist’s concept shows how ‘Oumuamua is usually depicted: as a cigar shaped asteroid.
This idea might have been dismissed outright if it came from someone less credentialed. But Loeb’s Harvard affiliation lent it gravitas—and he had a point. ‘Oumuamua’s strange cigar-like shape and unexplained acceleration fit the Hollywood stereotype of a spacecraft. It sped up slightly as it left the solar system, possibly due to outgassing like a comet. Yet no gas or dust was ever seen.
Loeb's reception has been frosty. Many mainstream researchers refuse to even mention his ideas in published papers. But Loeb hasn't backed down. He pioneered Project Galileo in 2021 to search the skies for technological artifacts. He has even searched the ocean floor. In mid-2023, Loeb announced the recovery of metallic spherules in the Pacific, arguing that they may be fragments from an artificial interstellar meteor. (Others strongly disagree.)
Now Loeb is looking at newly discovered interstellar object 3I/ATLAS as a potential piece of alien technology. In a paper co-authored by Adam Hibberd and Adam Crowl, he lays out nine ideas consistent with it being an intentional alien visitor. We review some of them here:
1. The orbit of 3I/ATLAS is strangely parallel to Earth's. It lies within 5 degrees of the ecliptic plane--a coincidence with odds of only 0.2%. The ecliptic plane is a narrow target, and the odds of a random interstellar comet hitting it this closely are low.
2. 3I/ATLAS will approach three planets during its visit: Venus (0.65au), Mars (0.19au) and Jupiter (0.36au). The cumulative probability of such a triple encounter is about 0.005%. However, it is the kind of pattern you might expect from a planetary survey.
3. 3I/ATLAS is on course to avoid Earth. At perihelion (closest approach to the sun), 3I/ATLAS and Earth will be on opposite sides of the sun. "This could be intentional to avoid detailed observations from Earth-based telescopes when the object is brightest or when gadgets are sent to Earth from that hidden vantage point," writes Loeb in a blog post. We believe this statement speaks for itself.
4. Although most astronomers believe 3I/ATLAS is a comet, "no spectral features of cometary gas are found in spectroscopic observations of 3I/ATLAS," notes Loeb. This is far from conclusive. For one thing, 3I/ATLAS is still very far away, and its spectral features may simply be too faint to observe. More importantly, new images from the Gemini North Telescope show 3I/ATLAS looking exactly like a comet with a normal gaseous envelope.
Above: Gemini North picture of 3I/ATLAS. It looks like a comet.
5. 3I/ATLAS has two chances to perform an Oberth maneuver. During its close approaches to the sun and Jupiter, 3I/ATLAS could fire its engines (if any) and become a permanent resident of the Solar System. That's exactly what an exploratory probe might want to do.
Taken together, these points read more like a collection of curious coincidences than compelling evidence of alien tech. Even the authors admit as much: "This paper is contingent on a remarkable but, as we shall show, testable hypothesis, to which the authors do not necessarily ascribe, yet is certainly worthy of an analysis and a report," they wrote.
We agree. It's okay to talk about these extraordinary claims, even if we don't believe them--yet. Stay tuned for updates as Loeb's hypotheses are put to the test.
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Every night, a network
of
NASA
all-sky cameras scans the skies above the United
States for meteoritic fireballs. Automated software
maintained by NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office
calculates their orbits, velocity, penetration depth
in Earth's atmosphere and many other characteristics.
Daily results are presented here on Spaceweather.com.
On Jul 20, 2025, the network reported 2 fireballs.
(2 sporadics)
In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits intersect at a single point--Earth. The orbits are color-coded by velocity, from slow (red) to fast (blue).
[Larger image] [movies]
Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (
PHAs)
are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that
can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the
known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet,
although astronomers are finding
new
ones all the time.
On July 21, 2025 there were 2349 potentially hazardous asteroids.
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Recent
& Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
| Asteroid |
Date(UT) |
Miss Distance |
Velocity (km/s) |
Diameter (m) |
| 2025 MA90 |
2025-Jul-15 |
16.9 LD |
9 |
89 |
| 2025 OL |
2025-Jul-15 |
3 LD |
6.6 |
35 |
| 2025 OF |
2025-Jul-15 |
1 LD |
16.1 |
16 |
| 2025 OC |
2025-Jul-17 |
0.8 LD |
6.9 |
9 |
| 2022 YS5 |
2025-Jul-17 |
17.4 LD |
6.1 |
38 |
| 2025 OA |
2025-Jul-17 |
2.5 LD |
14.2 |
16 |
| 2025 OB |
2025-Jul-18 |
3.3 LD |
14.1 |
21 |
| 2025 OS |
2025-Jul-19 |
0 LD |
12.7 |
4 |
| 2018 BY6 |
2025-Jul-19 |
13.7 LD |
7.4 |
68 |
| 2025 ME92 |
2025-Jul-20 |
13.4 LD |
5.3 |
30 |
| 2025 OR |
2025-Jul-31 |
12.8 LD |
8 |
29 |
| 2019 CO1 |
2025-Aug-08 |
17.8 LD |
10.5 |
65 |
| 2022 QB1 |
2025-Aug-10 |
8.9 LD |
3.9 |
6 |
| 2021 PJ1 |
2025-Aug-15 |
4.4 LD |
9.3 |
24 |
| 2025 CO3 |
2025-Aug-16 |
19.8 LD |
8.4 |
90 |
| 1997 QK1 |
2025-Aug-20 |
7.9 LD |
9.8 |
315 |
| 2022 QD3 |
2025-Aug-21 |
15 LD |
6.9 |
35 |
| 2023 PX |
2025-Aug-22 |
2.4 LD |
8.3 |
23 |
| 2019 QQ6 |
2025-Aug-24 |
9.4 LD |
17.2 |
31 |
| 2017 RK15 |
2025-Aug-29 |
15.8 LD |
13.2 |
26 |
| 2020 TS1 |
2025-Aug-29 |
17.8 LD |
3.3 |
5 |
| 1998 SH2 |
2025-Aug-30 |
8.1 LD |
17.3 |
246 |
| 2019 JG1 |
2025-Sep-09 |
18.8 LD |
7.9 |
17 |
| 2009 FF |
2025-Sep-11 |
6.8 LD |
12.9 |
155 |
| 2015 SA |
2025-Sep-13 |
10.3 LD |
9.1 |
31 |
| 2022 SS2 |
2025-Sep-13 |
2.4 LD |
7.2 |
13 |
Notes: LD means
"Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance
between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256
AU.
| |
Cosmic Rays in the Atmosphere |
SPACE WEATHER BALLOON DATA: Almost once a week, Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus fly space weather balloons to the stratosphere over California. These balloons are equipped with sensors that detect secondary cosmic rays, a form of radiation from space that can penetrate all the way down to Earth's surface. Our monitoring program has been underway without interruption for 10 years, resulting in a unique dataset of in situ atmospheric measurements.
Latest results (Nov. 2024): Atmospheric radiation is sharply decreasing in 2024. Our latest measurements in November registered a 10-year low:
What's going on? Ironically, the radiation drop is caused by increasing solar activity. Solar Cycle 25 has roared to life faster than forecasters expected. The sun's strengthening and increasingly tangled magnetic field repels cosmic rays from deep space. In addition, solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs) sweep aside cosmic rays, causing sharp reductions called "Forbush Decreases." The two effects blend together to bring daily radiation levels down.
.Who cares? Cosmic rays are a surprisingly "down to Earth" form of space weather. They can alter the chemistry of the atmosphere, trigger lightning, and penetrate commercial airplanes. According to a study from the Harvard T.H. Chan school of public health, crews of aircraft have higher rates of cancer than the general population. The researchers listed cosmic rays, irregular sleep habits, and chemical contaminants as leading risk factors. A number of controversial studies (#1, #2, #3, #4) go even further, linking cosmic rays with cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death.
Technical notes: The radiation sensors onboard our helium balloons detect X-rays and gamma-rays in the energy range 10 keV to 20 MeV. These energies span the range of medical X-ray machines and airport security scanners.
Data points in the graph labeled "Stratospheric Radiation" correspond to the peak of the Regener-Pfotzer maximum, which lies about 67,000 feet above central California. When cosmic rays crash into Earth's atmosphere, they produce a spray of secondary particles that is most intense at the entrance to the stratosphere. Physicists Eric Regener and Georg Pfotzer discovered the maximum using balloons in the 1930s and it is what we are measuring today.
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The
official U.S. government space weather bureau |
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The
first place to look for information about sundogs,
pillars, rainbows and related phenomena. |
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Researchers
call it a "Hubble for the sun." SDO
is the most advanced solar observatory ever. |
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3D
views of the sun from NASA's Solar and Terrestrial
Relations Observatory |
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Realtime
and archival images of the Sun from SOHO. |
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information about sunspots based on the latest NOAA/USAF Active Region Summary |
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current counts of failed and deployed Starlink satellites from Jonathan's Space Page. See also, all satellite statistics. |
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Authoritative predictions of space junk and satellite re-entries |
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from
the NOAA Space Environment Center |
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fun to read, but should be taken with a grain of salt! Forecasts looking ahead more than a few days are often wrong. |
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from the NOAA Space Environment Center |
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the
underlying science of space weather |
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Got a chipped or cracked windshield that prevents you from seeing space weather events while driving? Get windshield replacement from SR Windows & Glass with free mobile auto glass service anywhere in the Phoenix area. |
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