Into The Impossible

Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb joins Brian Keating to discuss a groundbreaking observation: the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has imaged 3I/ATLAS, a rare interstellar visitor, from the vantage point of Mars. In this episode, we explore: • What HiRISE detected and why it matters for planetary science. • How interstellar objects like ʻOumuamua and 3I/ATLAS challenge our theories. • Why Mars may become an ideal outpost for detecting future interstellar visitors. • The implications for astrobiology, planetary defense, and our search for extraterrestrial technology. ✨ Just as the 1977 “Wow! Signal” jolted radio astronomers with a one-time unexplained burst, 3I/ATLAS may be its optical cousin—an anomalous, fleeting, but potentially transformative messenger. Loeb even calculated that 3I/ATLAS’s trajectory passed within about one degree of the Wow! Signal’s sky position, making the connection more than metaphorical. Ignoring such rare alignments risks repeating history: anomalies slip t