EXCLUSIVE: Avi Loeb Reveals: What HiRISE Just Saw on Mars!

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 ?Oumuamua 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 through our fingers while orthodoxy insists nothing unusual happened. The Wow! Signal warned us of the danger of complacency; 3I/ATLAS reminds us that cosmic surprises often lurk at the margins of expectation, carrying lessons we may miss if we force every mystery into old categories. - ? EXCLUSIVE: Avi Loeb Reveals What HiRISE Just Saw on Mars! ? Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb joins me to discuss the latest revelations about interstellar object 3I/ATLAS as it makes its closest approach to Mars. From HiRISE images to unusual chemistry, polarization anomalies, and even a potential link to the Wow! Signal, this conversation explores whether 3I/ATLAS is a natural comet—or a possible technological artifact. Along the way, we cover censorship from Galileo to today’s UAP debates, the “Sputnik moment” of interstellar objects, and what a global response might look like. ?? Timestamps 0:00 – Introduction & why this day is special 1:29 – 3I/ATLAS closest approach to Mars: HiRISE imaging 2:50 – Mass, size, and what it means for its trajectory 5:06 – Global spacecraft observing 3I/ATLAS (NASA, ESA, UAE, China) 7:21 – Explaining the anomalies: jets, chemical makeup, negative polarization 13:06 – Alignment with the plane of planets (0.2% likelihood) 14:31 – Coincidence with the Wow! Signal and radio SETI opportunities 18:52 – White paper to the UN: global response to interstellar visitors 24:21 – Perseverance rover possible detection of ATLAS 29:47 – Nickel–iron anomaly and unusual chemistry 36:44 – Science inefficiency & missed discoveries (Hot Jupiters analogy) 43:29 – Why critics are wrong about “just a comet” 55:04 – Galileo, Pinker, and common knowledge parallels to UAP debates 1:01:20 – Peer review, censorship, and suppression in modern science