It began as a routine livestream. The kind of update Musk fans had grown used to — orbital data, propulsion tweaks, maybe a cryptic tweet thrown in for flavor. But this time, something was off. Musk wasn’t pacing. He wasn’t joking. He wasn’t selling a vision. He was sitting still, staring into the lens like he was about to say something he’d been holding back for years. And then he did.
“3I/ATLAS is not humanity’s salvation… It’s an alien spacecraft. I accidentally summoned it from a dead galaxy.”
The words landed like a punch to the chest. Not just for the viewers — but for the entire scientific community. Because this wasn’t a metaphor, it wasn’t a sci-fi pitch. It was a confession.
Musk went on to explain that years ago, he authorized a deep-space signal experiment. It was meant to be harmless — a test of intergalactic resonance, bouncing signals off distant voids to study gravitational anomalies. But something responded. Not data. Not static. A vessel. A structure. A presence.
“I thought we were reaching outward,” he said. “But instead… something reached back.”
The object, now known as 3I/ATLAS, was initially celebrated as a breakthrough. Its arrival was hailed as the dawn of a new era — proof that humanity could interact with deep space in ways never imagined. But Musk’s tone shifted. He described the ship’s architecture as “impossible,” its propulsion system as “non-physical,” and its trajectory as “deliberate.”
“It’s coming,” he said. “And it’s not here to help.”
He didn’t offer theories. He didn’t speculate on intent. He simply issued a warning: “We either run, or we destroy it before it reaches Earth.” The reaction was immediate. Panic. Denial. Obsession. Some called it a breakdown. Others called it the most important moment in modern history. But before the dust could settle, another revelation hit — and it was even more disturbing.
Just hours after Musk’s confession, the James Webb Space Telescope released data that stunned the astrophysics world. A structure had been detected. Not just older than the Milky Way. Not just older than the known universe. But older than time itself.
It wasn’t a star. It wasn’t a planet. It wasn’t anything that fit within the models we’ve trusted for centuries. It was a formation that bent light in ways that defied relativity. A gravitational field that distorted space itself. And its location? Aligned — almost perfectly — with the incoming path of 3I/ATLAS.
One astrophysicist described it as: “A scar in reality. A monument to something we were never meant to see.” The implications were staggering. Two revelations. One day. A spacecraft from a dead galaxy. A structure older than time. And a warning from the man who built our future — and may have doomed it.
Musk didn’t cry. He didn’t plead. But his final words lingered:
“I thought I was building hope. But maybe I opened a door that should’ve stayed shut.”
And somewhere, far beyond the stars, something ancient is moving. And it’s coming.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk Responds To Wild Speculation That 3I/ATLAS Is An Alien Spaceship
The SpaceX CEO offered his expertise on the topic.
James Felton
Senior Staff Writer
James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile
EditedbyKaty Evans
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and CEO of private space firm SpaceX, has weighed in on the topic of interstellar object 3I/ATLAS, and the hypothesis that it may be an alien mothership (spoiler alert: it isn’t).
On July 1, 2025, astronomers at the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System spotted an object hurtling through our Solar System at a velocity that would soon take it right back out again. Soon, other telescopes turned towards the object, now known to be a comet, and found that it was indeed on an escape trajectory. The Solar System had its third confirmed interstellar visitor, after 2017’s 1I/’Oumuamua and 2019’s 2I/Borisov.
It’s an interesting object, and one scientists are very keen to get a better look at. The key reason being that it is an interstellar object that may have been traveling alone for around 10 billion years, a time capsule from an earlier age of the universe, and a traveler from a different part of our galaxy.
But the reason why it has drawn a little more attention is because of wild (and incorrect) speculation that it may be an alien spacecraft. This was first proposed by Harvard astronomer and physicist Avi Loeb, who initially proposed it as a pedagogical, or “teaching”, exercise when the comet was on its way to perihelion, the closest approach to the Sun, which occurred on October 30. According to Loeb, an alien spacecraft wishing to conceal a maneuver may choose to do so when it reaches perihelion, where it will be hidden from our view behind the Sun.
While this hypothesis has been dismissed as unnecessary by astronomers at NASA, SETI, and pretty much the entire astronomical community, now it is time for the real heavyweights to weigh in: Elon Musk and UFC commentator turned podcaster Joe Rogan.
In an interview for The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Rogan asked the X owner if he was paying attention to 3I/ATLAS, “whatever it is”.
Musk was quick to step in and shut down alien speculation, referring to the object, correctly, as a comet.
“One thing I can say is like, look, if I was aware of any evidence of aliens, Joe, you have my word. I will come on your show and I will reveal it on the show,” Musk told Rogan.
Unhelpfully, Musk did briefly say “it could be aliens, I don’t know”, before Rogan weighed in again, saying that Loeb had said something that day about how the object had “changed course”. While it is unclear exactly what Loeb quote he was referring to, it is likely that the object’s trajectory has changed slightly, but this is not itself evidence that the object is a spacecraft making a maneuver.
As explained by Loeb himself in a blog post, 3I/ATLAS has undergone a “radial acceleration away from the Sun of 1.1×10^{-6} au per day squared”, as well as a “transverse acceleration relative to the Sun’s direction of 3.7×10^{-7} au per day squared”.
That might sound odd, but it is not unexpected, nor a sign that it is an alien spaceship. As comets approach the Sun, they are heated and lose mass by outgassing, where the volatile ices on their surface vaporize, and conservation of momentum tells us the object undergoes a resulting acceleration. Its course changed because it’s a comet approaching the Sun, behaving like a comet approaching the Sun.
Next, Rogan brought up the unusual amount of nickel on the object, implying that this could be a sign that it is an alien spacecraft, adding incorrectly that the only way that exists on Earth is in industrial alloys. Here, Musk was a lot more helpful in showing his space credentials.
“No, there are definitely comets and asteroids which are primarily made of nickel,” he told the host. “So the places where you mine nickel on Earth are actually where there was an asteroid or comet that hit Earth that was nickel-rich. Nickel-rich deposits… are from impacts. You definitely didn’t want to be there at the time because anything would have been obliterated. But that’s where the sources of nickel and cobalt are these days.”
With this, Rogan moved on to his next point, reading a Reddit post quoting an Avi Loeb blog post about the “first hint of non-gravitational acceleration that something other than gravity is affecting its acceleration, meaning something is affecting its trajectory beyond gravity was indicated”.
As already explained, this was likely the result of outgassing of a comet. Rogan again tried to say that nickel was only found in manufacturing.
Musk pointed out a second time that there are plenty of nickel-rich objects out there in the cosmos, before pivoting to his real area of expertise, pointing out “It’ll be a very sort of heavy spaceship if you make it all out of nickel.”
With Musk not playing ball on the “alien mothership” scenario, the two moved on to how much destruction the object would cause if it hit Earth.
“It would like obliterate a continent type of thing,” Musk told Rogan. “Maybe worse. Probably kill most of human life. If not all of us,” he added, though there is no suggestion that the object could hit Earth at all.
All in all, Musk was keen to stress that there is a natural explanation for the object. As every astronomer has been screaming for the past few months, it is a comet.
