3I/ATLAS' bizarre trajectory suggests it could be sending 'satellites' to spy on Jupiter: scientist He placed said bet through the Long Now Foundation’s Long Bets program, a public arena for “enjoyably competitive” predictions that are of interest to society and have “philanthropic money at stake.” How will the winner be decided? Shermer decreed that by December 31, 2030, at least two of the following institutions — NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the American Astronomical Society — would need to confirm the discovery of “extraterrestrial intelligence,” per the mag. This would be defined by “UAPs, UFOs, or any other interstellar objects that are determined to be ETI technological in nature, or any alien biological life form found here on Earth.” 4 “The only way the conversation can change is if most reasonable people agree that we have a neighbor and something and a technological object that was not produced by us [that] happened to be found,” Loeb told the Post. “So that’s the threshold for succeeding, and I very much hope it’ll happen.” Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Loeb was optimistic that his side could prevail. “The search for technological artifacts has just started in earnest in 2025 with the discovery of the anomalous interstellar object 3I/ATLAS,” among other events, he wrote on Medium. He said this ET hunt “was necessitated due to the “billions of Earth-Sun analogs in the Milky-Way galaxy most of which are billions of years older than the solar system.” “I’m willing to bet that we are not the first intelligent species in the multiway galaxy,” the scientist told the Post. “And there were much more accomplished civilizations that Elon Musk was not the most accomplished space entrepreneur since the big bank 13.8 billion years ago.” He added, “It seems to me very likely that there were lots of other technological civilizations that built the spacecraft and engaged in travel.” The only question, per Loeb, is “how close is the nearest one?” 4 Dr. Michael Shermer speaks to students and guests as he promotes his book “The Moral Arc. How Science Leads Humanity Toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom,” held at Tilburg University in the Dante Building on March 17, 2015 in Tilburg, Netherlands. Getty Images The answer could potentially come in the form of 3I/ATLAS , which Loeb repeatedly noted has displayed oodles of “anomalies.” Earlier this week, Loeb posited that the comet’s bizarre trajectory toward Jupiter — which it will reach in March — suggested that it seed the gas planet with “satellites” to gather intel for an “extraterrestrial civilization.” “If it does something strange near Jupiter, then we find that it left some probes that arrive in various locations, that obviously will change the way we think about it,” he told Post. Although he admitted that the evidence would need to be “clear” and “not disputed.” Loeb summed up his position as such on Medium: “It is better to be an optimist because life is sometimes a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is why I am engaged in the search with the hope that we will find a partner on our blind date with interstellar objects.” Image of 3I/ATLAS acquired by HiRISE on October 2, 2025. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona See Also ‘It’s never been cooler to be an alien contactee’: A night with ET experiencers in NYC On the contrary, Shermer argued that, after 33 years of documenting UFOlogist predictions that ET arrival is imminent, he has yet to have “proof of alien contact.” The Skeptics Society founder claimed that that proponents of UAPs as alien spacecraft have appeared before the U.S. Congress, confidently claiming that they know people who have experienced and/or communed with ETs. However, when pressed, “they always demur, saying that it’s ‘classified’, ‘top-secret’ that Men-in-Black threatened them into silence, that their careers and even their lives are at stake if they disclose said evidence,” Shermer scoffed. The following bet would close book by getting believers “to put their money where their beliefs appear to be.” In this way, the wager could potentially prove to be the “Inherit The Wind”-style contest for the interstellar age. “If Loeb wins the bet, it will represent what would arguably be the greatest discovery in human history, namely that we are not alone in the universe,” the Skeptic writes. “If Shermer wins the bet, it does not mean that we are the only intelligence in the cosmos, only that claims of contact are likely greatly exaggerated and that we need to keep searching for the truth about extraterrestrial intelligence.” In either case, the $1,000 proceeds will go to the Galileo Project Foundation, Loeb’s research initiative dedicated to the search for potential extra-terrestrial artifacts and anomalous aerial phenomena of the kind that could support his case. Filed under Source: https://nypost.com/2025/11/26/science/avi-loeb-takes-skeptics-1000-alien-bet-following-3i-atlas-claims/