{"id":18977,"date":"2025-09-16T02:17:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T02:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/18977\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T02:17:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T02:17:11","slug":"the-new-comet-swan-c-2025-r2-originated-from-a-different-direction-than-3i-atlas-by-avi-loeb-sep-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/18977\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Comet SWAN (C\/2025 R2) Originated from a Different Direction Than 3I\/ATLAS | by Avi Loeb | Sep, 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Avi<\/a>Press enter or click to view image in full size\"\"Color and brightness images of the new bright comet C\/2025 R2 (SWAN) from the iTelescope.net T59 (0.51-m f\/6.8 reflector + CCD) located at the Siding Spring Observatory, Australia. (Credit: Filipp Romanov<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The SWAN instrument onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory<\/a> (SOHO) spacecraft revealed on September 11, 2025 the presence of a new comet, officially named C\/2025 R2 (SWAN)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This new bright comet has a long tail that stretches across 2 degrees in the sky and amateur astronomers observed it near the Sun. It originated from the direction of the Sun relative to Earth, explaining why it was not spotted earlier. Between August 8 and September 13, 2025, it was within 30 degrees from the Sun, too close to the Sun for most telescopes to observe it.<\/p>\n

The comet\u2019s perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) occurred on September 12, 2025 at a distance of 75 million kilometers (half of the Earth-Sun separation, 0.5 AU) from the Sun. Earth will cross the comet\u2019s orbit on October 5, 2025, potentially encountering a related meteor shower. The closest approach of SWAN to Earth would be at a distance of 39 million kilometers on October 20, 2025. The orbital period of SWAN around the Sun is 286 years, and its aphelion (farthest distance from the Sun) is 86 AU \u2014 within the outer Kuiper belt.<\/p>\n

As soon as I learned about SWAN, I was curious whether it might have originated from 3I\/ATLAS, either as a fragment that broke off from a natural icy rock or as a scout released by a technological mothership at a large distance. However, my brilliant collaborator Peter Veres confirmed that the arrival directions of the two objects are very different: SWAN originated on this encounter from the direction of the Aquarius constellation<\/a> on the sky whereas 3I\/ATLAS arrived from the Sagittarius constellation<\/a> in the direction of the center of the Milky-Way galaxy. Although both constellations overlap with the ecliptic plane of the planets around the Sun, they are separated by tens of degrees in the sky (see the map of constellations here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Also today, I received a surprising email about a singer with a last name identical to the new comet, Swan, which read as follows:<\/p>\n

\u201cHi Avi,<\/p>\n

Congrats on everything and for the fascinating scientific work you do\u2026<\/p>\n

Oli Swan co-writes with Robbie Williams including his recent No1 hit \u2018Lost\u2019. Oli has a new solo song for future release \u2018Aliens are Real\u2019 which I thought could interest you for usage especially with the 3I\/ATLAS mystery.<\/p>\n

It would be amazing to connect with you and to hear your thoughts on the song and to see if there is potential with you for a quote<\/p>\n

Really looking forward to hearing from you<\/p>\n

Best,\u201d<\/p>\n

My response was:<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you for reaching out. I just listened to the song and loved it. Here is my quote:<\/p>\n

Yes, aliens are likely real. There are billions of Earth-Sun analogs in the Milky-Way galaxy alone and most of them formed billions of years before the Sun. It would be arrogant of us to imagine that similar houses on the cosmic street hosted only microbes and had no intelligent residents. For 65 years, we have been waiting for a phone call in the form of a radio signal. Instead, we should search for a tennis ball in our back yard or a knock on our front door in the form of an interstellar object like 3I\/ATLAS, or some other unidentified anomalous phenomena. Fermi\u2019s question: \u201cWhere is everybody?\u201d is a question that every lonely person asks. \u201cAre we not alone?\u201d is the most romantic question in science.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here are the words of Oli\u2019s new song:<\/p>\n

OLI SWAN<\/p>\n

ALIENS ARE REAL:<\/p>\n

I DON\u2019T WANNA WIND UP LIKE SOME WORN OUT FOOL WHO ONCE BURNED BRIGHT<\/p>\n

IN SOME OLD GOD FORSAKEN PLACE<\/p>\n

TOO HIP TO CARE, TOO ALONE TO SAY<\/p>\n

AND I DON\u2019T WANNA STAY IN BED WHILE OTHERS GO FIND LOVE THAT\u2019S THERE<\/p>\n

\u2018COZ I WAS HERE THE DAY THEY SAID THAT ALIENS WERE REAL INSTEAD<\/p>\n

AND I DON\u2019T WANNA LIE NO MORE<\/p>\n

DON\u2019T WANNA CRY OUT ON MY FLOOR<\/p>\n

AND I DON\u2019T WANNA PAY MY RENT<\/p>\n

OR GO TOO STRAIGHT, OR WIND UP BENT<\/p>\n

\u2018COZ I WAS HERE THE DAY THEY SAID THE ALIENS WERE REALLY THERE<\/p>\n

UP ABOVE AND DOWN BELOW<\/p>\n

AND CLOSE ENOUGH THAT WE COULD KNOW<\/p>\n

BUT MAYBE I\u2019M JUST TIRED<\/p>\n

AND STRUNG UP A LITTLE TOO TIGHT<\/p>\n

AND MAYBE I COULD CHANGE THAT LONELY FEELING\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2018COZ I DON\u2019T WANNA WIND UP LIKE SOME BURNED OUT FOOL WHO USED TO TRY<\/p>\n

IN SOME OLD GOD FORSAKEN PLACE<\/p>\n

WHEN LOVE WAS THERE BUT WENT TO WASTE<\/p>\n

\u2018COZ I REMEMBER WHEN THEY CLAIMED THE ALIENS WERE HERE TO STAY<\/p>\n

UP ABOVE AND DOWN BELOW<\/p>\n

AND CLOSE ENOUGH THAT WE COULD KNOW<\/p>\n

YEH BUT MAYBE I\u2019M JUST TIRED<\/p>\n

AND STRUNG UP A LITTLE TOO TIGHT<\/p>\n

AND MAYBE I COULD CHANGE THAT LONELY FEELING<\/p>\n

YEH MAYBE I COULD CHANGE THAT LONELY FEELING\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2018COZ I DON\u2019T WANNA WIND UP LIKE SOME WORN OUT FOOL WHO ONCE BURNED BRIGHT<\/p>\n

IN SOME OLD GOD FORSAKEN PLACE<\/p>\n

TOO HIP TO CARE, TOO ALONE TO SAY<\/p>\n

\u2018COZ I WAS HERE THE DAY THEY SAID THE ALIENS WERE REALLY THERE<\/p>\n

Well, as a scientist \u2014 I do not yet know if aliens are really there, but I am here doing my best to find out.<\/p>\n

ABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/p>\n

Press enter or click to view image in full size\"\"(Image Credit: Chris Michel, National Academy of Sciences, 2023)<\/p>\n

Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University\u2019s \u2014 Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011\u20132020). He is a former member of the President\u2019s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of \u201cExtraterrestrial:<\/a> The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth<\/a>\u201d and a co-author of the textbook \u201cLife in the Cosmos<\/a>\u201d, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled \u201cInterstellar<\/a>\u201d, was published in August 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Press enter or click to view image in full sizeColor and brightness images of the new bright comet…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,141,145],"class_list":["post-18977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}