Inspired by the unresolved anomalies displayed by the latest interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS (as listed here), I co-authored a new paper with the brilliant graduate student, Oem Trivedi. The paper is titled: “A Comprehensive Network for the Discovery and Characterization of Interstellar Objects.”
The last decade had ushered-in the discovery of interstellar objects (ISOs), marking the emergence of a genuinely new observational window into our cosmic neighborhood beyond the Solar System, akin to finding objects from the street in our backyard. The discoveries of 1I/‘Oumuamua, IM1, 2I/Borisov, and most recently 3I/ATLAS, have demonstrated unambiguously that the Solar System is not isolated but rather permeated by a substantial flux of objects from our cosmic street. These detections provided the first direct empirical evidence for the physical properties of objects born in environments far removed from our own. In doing so, ISO astronomy has begun to offer insights in a way that was previously accessible only through remote observing and indirect inference.
At the same time, the rapid progress of the field has highlighted how young and structurally incomplete ISO studies are. Current discoveries are rare, observationally constrained and often characterized by substantial degeneracies in physical interpretation. Detection of new ISOs is limited by short visibility windows and survey observing frequency (cadence). Follow-up observations are frequently reactive, fragmented and constrained by atmospheric or scheduling limitations. As a result, many of the most fundamental questions regarding ISO size, shape, composition, internal structure and dynamical history, remain weakly constrained. These challenges imply that the present era represents an early, exploratory phase in which observational capability has outpaced the development of a coherent end-to-end strategy.
This state-of-affairs motivated me and Oem to imagine a future observational architecture for ISO studies that can scale with rising discovery rates and increasing scientific and societal relevance. Aside from the opportunity to learn about asteroids or comets in other planetary systems, the possibility that some ISOs might carry alien technology highlights their potential significance for the future of humanity. In the context of planetary defense, it is imperative to develop a comprehensive detection and characterization scheme that would alert earthlings to a `black swan event’ — in which an interstellar technological probe would pose a potential threat to humanity. The likelihood of this risk can be expressed in the context of the Loeb Classification Scale, as quantified here, here and here.
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