Content Disclaimer: This article contains speculative theories presented for entertainment. Readers are encouraged to form their own conclusions.
October 2025. The MeerKAT telescope in South Africa picked up something unexpected.
The instrument had been pointed at 3I/ATLAS, the interstellar visitor that had entered our solar system just months earlier. Researchers were looking for the usual signs of cometary activity. What they found was different.
Sharp radio bursts. Brief, but distinct. The initial explanation was straightforward enough. Strange water chemistry, perhaps. Charged particles interacting with the solar wind. Nothing that couldn't be explained by known physics.
The scientific community noted the observation and moved on. Comets do strange things sometimes. That's part of what makes them interesting.
But the signals didn't stop.
Through November and into December, multiple observatories began reporting similar detections. The bursts became more regular. More predictable. Around December 12th, operators at several facilities noticed something that made them pause.
A narrowband spike. Repeating patterns. The kind of signal that doesn't usually come from rocks tumbling through space.
NASA's Deep Space Network picked it up. So did the Europa Clipper spacecraft, which happened to be positioned for observation. The readings were consistent across different instruments, different locations, different times.
Something was transmitting from 3I/ATLAS. Or at least, something was producing radio emissions that looked very much like a transmission.
The Breakthrough Listen project had already scheduled observation time with the Green Bank Telescope. In December, they pointed the massive dish at the interstellar object and listened.
They found nothing within their search parameters. No obvious technosignatures. No clearly artificial patterns. The signal, whatever it was, didn't match what they were looking for.
But absence of evidence in one search doesn't mean the mystery is solved. It just means the answer, if there is one, lies outside the boundaries of that particular investigation.
The signals continued. And the questions multiplied.
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