3I/Atlas is a large alien spacecraft. It is travelling through our Solar System at 245,000 km/h, and it is the fastest thing we’ve ever seen. It’s trajectory is “perfect”, it will be within 1AU (30 million km) of Mars while Earth is on the opposite side of the Sun. We will be unable to see what happens. We even know the dates it will disappear, pass by Mars, and then re-appear on the other side of the Sun. Or do we?
It’s been all over the network news that 3I/Atlas may be an alien object, and I’m with those folks. I also believe it is a alien spacecraft. But I think it is loaded with thousands or perhaps millions of alien creatures, and their “eggs”. In mid September we we will no longer be able to see 3I/Atlas, because of the brightness of the Sun which is now between Earth and it. We have projected the trajectory will bring it to within 30 million kilometers from Mars, when Earth is directly opposite the Sun. And it will get a gravity assist and it will reappear sometime in early December, now in the morning sky, on the other side of the Sun. That means that there will be about 70 days of not knowing anything about this object, from mid September until early December. We will not be able to see it.
Suppose that it collided with Mars for some reason? This huge metallic asteroid slamming into Mars around October 2nd. And in early December, we start looking for 3I/Atlas. Wondering how fast did it accelerate, and comparing that to our models? But it doesn’t show. We keep waiting, night after night. It’s gone, and we can’t find it! And we can’t see Mars yet either; we saw it all summer and now it is also opposite the Sun from us. It will first peek out (reaching conjunction) on January 2, 2026, but we really won’t be able to safely see it until early March, due to the Sun’s brightness. And when we do see it sometime between those two dates, what if we see that there’s a massive fireball on Mars? 3I/Atlas apparently slammed into the planet instead of flying past it. What happened? Why were our calculations and models so wrong?
Or, suppose that instead it slowed down some time after we could no longer see it. Slowing down enough to launch a barrage of smaller ships to Mars – a massive invasion. Think Independence Day, but on Mars. There’s nobody there to fight back, we’re not even close to being able to do that. And they also have over 100 days to get their new Mars base setup, from when it first disappeared in September, and then Mars re-emerged sometime between January and March 2026. Until Mars reappears, we would have no idea what is going on there. It could be a complete takeover of Mars that we never even saw happen.
But also assume that 3I/Atlas does come back out, only that it’s well past our expectations. Perhaps appearing in late January instead of early December as we had originally believed. It’s about 50 days later than we expected. We calculate the new speed of 3I/Atlas and find out that it has apparently slowed down by nearly 50%, now travelling at only 125,000 km/h. Huge scientific discussions erupt. We wonder why the various physics models don’t explain this. What happened? We are still unaware that Mars has been completely taken over, and now the ship is continuing on through our Solar System, still on a path to Jupiter, as expected … just slower.
Finally in mid January of 2026, we again see Mars. But we see that a massive portion of the Martian surface has been visibly taken over by a technological civilization, similar to The Borg. Total panic sets in back here on Earth!
They obviously planned to arrive at this very opportune time. Giving them plenty of time to transform Mars to their needs while we have no idea what’s going on. We would not be able to see Mars or anything happening there. They were able to setup a strong base and prepare to be attacked in the event that we had been a possible adversary. But obviously we are not. Now they have lots of time to continue to expand. And then in April of 2026 the Mother Ship arrives at Jupiter. Eventually becoming their space station in orbit. Serving as the hub for their Mars/Jupiter resource runs, with the asteroid belt in-between. They are immensely more advanced than us, and it’s on display. Our telescopes see them moving around out there. And all we can do is watch in horror, waiting for the day they come knocking.
I hope this does not happen. And if they do decide to colonize Mars, hopefully they are peaceful. They would know that we cannot hurt them and they have plenty of time to get established while keeping an eye on us. They are in control of the situation, and they have no worry about us. We are still years away from our first attempt at manned flight to Mars, much less sending an army. And in fact there’s a possibility that we wipe ourselves out. The uncertainty of seeing all of this unfolding creates massive panic, leading to riots, and eventually a new world war.
Just a few minutes ago, I finished a philosophical chat with ChatGPT AI about my theory above. I’ve never used AI like this before today. It was quite interesting. As a long-time computer geek, AI has always been interesting. I mentioned on one of my other blogs about how I had created a “Reversi” game in LISP in college. I gave up because creating the code for the “thinking ahead” part of playing the game was impossible. At that time, the AI industry was still struggling with parsing of basic English sentences into noun, verb, direct object, etc. Something that is trivial for Alexa or Siri today.
I treated ChatGPT like an advisor. I asked it it’s “thoughts and perspectives” about the alien invasion of Mars. ChatGPT also thought the idea was a fantastic storyline, if nothing else. Interesting possible concept of an alien race, travelling millions of years through interstellar space. Having planned this action that long ago. They were able to make course corrections along the way if needed, so they just hurled outward in our direction. Probes having visited Earth many times over time. They picked the perfect timing to take over Mars. It isn’t “invasion” if nobody is there, right? And they’ve been living in a huge Mega Mother Ship, for so long. Now thousands of massive ships deploy from all around. When they land on Mars, they have everything needed for harvesting Mars resources and setting up a new colony. For them having access to Mars is a huge expansion compared to what they’ve had. Onboard each large ship has millions of biological beings, with massive computer and robotics. Plus entire nurseries of “eggs” – biological seeds of future generations. Like a giant bee colony. Plus other seeds for any other requirements such as plants or fungus or even other animals.
Anyway, we had an interesting discussion.