The SWAN instrument onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft revealed on September 11, 2025 the presence of a new comet, officially named C/2025 R2 (SWAN).
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.
The comet’s 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’s 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 — within the outer Kuiper belt.
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 on the sky whereas 3I/ATLAS arrived from the Sagittarius constellation 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).
Also today, I received a surprising email about a singer with a last name identical to the new comet, Swan, which read as follows:
“Hi Avi,
Congrats on everything and for the fascinating scientific work you do…
Oli Swan co-writes with Robbie Williams including his recent No1 hit ‘Lost’. Oli has a new solo song for future release ‘Aliens are Real’ which I thought could interest you for usage especially with the 3I/ATLAS mystery.
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
Really looking forward to hearing from you
Best,”
My response was:
“Thank you for reaching out. I just listened to the song and loved it. Here is my quote:
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’s question: “Where is everybody?” is a question that every lonely person asks. “Are we not alone?” is the most romantic question in science.”
Here are the words of Oli’s new song:
OLI SWAN
ALIENS ARE REAL:
I DON’T WANNA WIND UP LIKE SOME WORN OUT FOOL WHO ONCE BURNED BRIGHT
IN SOME OLD GOD FORSAKEN PLACE
TOO HIP TO CARE, TOO ALONE TO SAY
AND I DON’T WANNA STAY IN BED WHILE OTHERS GO FIND LOVE THAT’S THERE
‘COZ I WAS HERE THE DAY THEY SAID THAT ALIENS WERE REAL INSTEAD
AND I DON’T WANNA LIE NO MORE
DON’T WANNA CRY OUT ON MY FLOOR
AND I DON’T WANNA PAY MY RENT
OR GO TOO STRAIGHT, OR WIND UP BENT
‘COZ I WAS HERE THE DAY THEY SAID THE ALIENS WERE REALLY THERE
UP ABOVE AND DOWN BELOW
AND CLOSE ENOUGH THAT WE COULD KNOW
BUT MAYBE I’M JUST TIRED
AND STRUNG UP A LITTLE TOO TIGHT
AND MAYBE I COULD CHANGE THAT LONELY FEELING…
‘COZ I DON’T WANNA WIND UP LIKE SOME BURNED OUT FOOL WHO USED TO TRY
IN SOME OLD GOD FORSAKEN PLACE
WHEN LOVE WAS THERE BUT WENT TO WASTE
‘COZ I REMEMBER WHEN THEY CLAIMED THE ALIENS WERE HERE TO STAY
UP ABOVE AND DOWN BELOW
AND CLOSE ENOUGH THAT WE COULD KNOW
YEH BUT MAYBE I’M JUST TIRED
AND STRUNG UP A LITTLE TOO TIGHT
AND MAYBE I COULD CHANGE THAT LONELY FEELING
YEH MAYBE I COULD CHANGE THAT LONELY FEELING…
‘COZ I DON’T WANNA WIND UP LIKE SOME WORN OUT FOOL WHO ONCE BURNED BRIGHT
IN SOME OLD GOD FORSAKEN PLACE
TOO HIP TO CARE, TOO ALONE TO SAY
‘COZ I WAS HERE THE DAY THEY SAID THE ALIENS WERE REALLY THERE
Well, as a scientist — I do not yet know if aliens are really there, but I am here doing my best to find out.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — 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 (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s 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 “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.