The Milky Way alone has an almost innumerable number of stars in it, and it’s estimated that a high percentage of these stars have planets orbiting around them.

Given these two facts, I believe that the chances of intelligent life arising—and some of that life spacefaring—seems pretty likely to me, and given this gigantic time scale, perhaps innumerable such civilizations have risen, for a while had their place in the sun, flourished and, then, fallen.

If, indeed, there are currently space faring civilizations interested in us humans and in planet Earth, perhaps each one of what may perhaps be several different NHI civilizations has its own agenda, plans, methods, and technological capabilities—some very sophisticated, some perhaps less so, and perhaps they don’t “share.”

One group of NHIs takes one approach with the tech it has available, another takes another one—one approach low tech, another much higher.

So let me get this straight. For decades extraterrestrial craft have been visiting Earth, having thousands of direct encounters with us, playing cat-and-mouse games with our most advanced ships and airplanes, completely confounding them…AND these same extraterrestrials sent a probe completely indistinguishable from an icy rock to check us out from a distance, never coming within 100 million miles of our planet, lest we detect it?

When every misshapen cloud is an alien spacecraft, it’s time to admit you are not engaging in rational thought. It’s a religion, however weird of one it might be.

Just now Harvard Astrophysicist Dr. Avi Loeb points out yet another 3I/Atlas anomaly, and that is that, despite 3I/Atlas having been calculated to rotate once every 16 hours or so, the seven or so jets of matter which have been observed shooting out from 3I/Atlas, and in different directions (one of them more than a million miles long) shoot out in straight lines, and are not perturbed, or effected, in any way, by this rotation, as you might expect them to be—their paths should be curved, or periodically interrupted–but they aren’t.*

He won’t say it, but I will, sure looks, to me, like something artificial, technological—i.e. some sort of propulsion system.

* See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3-ValCyq2c

How might an entity which lived for 500, a thousand years, or which was, for all practical purposes, essentially immortal view and understand the life, viewpoint, reactions, concerns, and plans of us comparatively short-lived humans?

This, of course, assumes that any such interstellar travel must be arduous, time consuming, and expensive.

But what if it isn’t any of those limiting things, and, that—in a NHI post-scarcity society— technological advancements and discoveries have made such interstellar travel relatively quick, cheap, and easy?

The question of why any presumably advanced NHI might be interested in us humans and in the Earth is of course a key one.

Despite the fertile and very prolific imaginings of science fiction writers, the only examples we really have of motives and linked behaviors are human ones and, outside of those examples, we can speculate, but we cannot really know or fully anticipate under what evolutionary pressures, physical environments, and social pressures, under what imperatives the mindsets and values of any particular species of NHIs might have been shaped; what they value, need, and want, and perhaps desperately so.

With the above in mind, it seems to me that we can divide possible NHI motives into those which—from our human perspective–might be considered benign, those which might be considered neural, those which might be considered malign, and, finally, those which might just be totally incomprehensible from our human perspective.

Benign—the NHIs are here to rescue us from our bad decisions, and/or to help us “mature,” and to guide us into a much brighter future (of course, as “they” might define a “brighter future”).

Neutral—NHIs have no particular interest in helping us humans in any major way, and if we screw ourselves or our planet up in any major—possibly irreversible way—that is our problem, they just might just want to trade with us.

Alternatively, perhaps they find our antics highly amusing, and we are nothing more than a source of entertainment for them; Jerry Springer writ large, on a world-wide scale.

Malign—NHIs are here to take over, to replace us, and/or to steal everything they can, to strip mine our solar system, they can no longer reproduce themselves and need to steal our DNA to create hybrids, and/or perhaps they just want to enslave us all, or we humans are just meat, a food source.

What might NHIs value and want?

Vital things they don’t have—enough water, certain minerals, our entire working biosphere, humans as a food source, animals, various biological organisms, and human DNA to work with.

Possibly unique things which might be of interest to a jaded and bored NHI—human art, music and musical instruments, cuisine or particular spices, or literature, unique human technology, ancient artifacts, religious art, objects which are hand crafted.

Incomprehensible—things which are colored cerulean blue, Paprika, a particular color of Jade, a particular tartan cloth, birds which talk, chess pieces, cats or dogs, ordinary kitchen equipment, smells which to them are pornographic, etc. etc.

Please explain why Earth and Humans are sufficiently interesting to a non-human intelligence capable of sending such a probe. Sincere question. I really don’t see why.