Interstellar Meteorites and Where to Find Them: The treasure could be at the bottom of the sea, sank 8 years ago off the coast of Papua New Guinea after a light-year journey.
If the calculations are correct, let’s talk about the first meteorite to arrive from outside the Solar System, formed around another star. At some point it was pushed towards our galactic neighborhood and it so happened that the Earth was in its path. Now a group of researchers, led by Avi Loeb, the astrophysicist already known for researching evidence of extraterrestrial technologies in sky observation, want to fish out what remains of this “interstellar rock”. Maybe hoping that something anomalous can be interpreted as of artificial origin. IS a suggestive storywhich, however, still has some points to resolve concerning the accuracy and transparency of the published calculations, not subjected to a scientific review.
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The case of the “interstellar meteorite”
Only in recent years have we begun to discover, and study, objects that cross the Solar System and then fly away, too fast to stop. Because they did not originate from the cloud that ignited the Sun and thickened the planets. In 2017, Oumuamua (in Hawaiian language means “messenger”) it was the first interstellar asteroid to be observed; in 2019 it was the turn of 2I / Borisov, the first alien comet, whose open and hyperbolic trajectory, like that of Oumuaua, left no room for doubt. Missing only a close encounter, a direct contact for to study something so foreign live. Loeb’s team says they know where to look for him.
In 2019, in a study signed by Amir Siraj, Abraham Loeb of the Harvard Department of Astronomy, it was hypothesized that CNEOS 2014-01-08, the meteorite that exploded in the sky above the Isle of Manus, about 160 kilometers offshore, on January 8, 2014, was of interstellar origin given the trajectory free and hyperbolic, with a “safety of 99.999%”. Further confirmation came this year when the US Department of Defense Space Command, analyzing the measures collected from that event, he said yes“The velocity is accurate enough to indicate an interstellar trajectory.”
To certify it, he needed the measurements (covered by secrecy) of an American spy satellite, whose job is to detect possible missile launches from hostile powers. In an article for Scientific American, Siraj himself explained that “at the distance of the Earth from the Sun, any object moving at a speed greater than about 42 kilometers per second is in an unlimited hyperbolic orbit with respect to our star, which means that it is too fast to be caught by the Sun’s gravity“. According to the calculations, the meteorite entered the atmosphere at a speed of over 45 kilometers per second, about 60 kilometers per second relative to the Sun.
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But “the calculations are to be verified”
Here, however, it is necessary to make a distinction. Wikipedia in English defines CNEOS 2014-01-08 “an interstellar object”, while the French version carries the hypothesis without exaggerating: “The confirmation of the observation of a meteor of interstellar origin would be a result of considerable proportions, and it would be the first case in the world. The recovery of any fragments that have fallen to the ground would then be a huge success, I would say almost incredible, since it is material external to our Solar System – he explained to us. Daniele Gardiol, astronomer of INAF, the Astrophysical Observatory of Turin – However, for this very reason, healthy caution is a must. There are numerous networks for the observation of meteors, in Italy there is Prisma, which often observe objects potentially of extrasolar origin, but so far none have been confirmed “.
The point is that Loeb and Siraj’s calculations have not been revised, and indeed have been rejected for publication. And transparency is lacking, of course, also for military data: “The authors of the alleged discovery report only the final results without many other details in an article that does not appear to have passed the scrutiny of the peer review, that is a critical review by colleagues of equal competence – added Gardiol, who is national coordinator of the Prisma network – This step is essential to be able to accept their thesis. The repeated and somewhat forced statement that the US Department of Defense has confirmed the results is worthless, the risk of making a mistake in the calculations is just around the corner. Unfortunately, since these are observations made by the military, the errors in the measurement are not known. If these errors were a little too big, the whole system of the scientists’ reasoning would collapse like a house of cards from which the last one is taken away ”.
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Go fishing for meteorites
If instead Loeb and colleagues were right, the first interstellar object observed would no longer be Oumuamua, but CNEOS 2014-01-08. But now it is necessary to go fishing. And that’s exactly what Loeb and Siraj describe in the latest study, also deposited on the Arxiv platform. The two scientists want to raise funds to equip a ship with a special magnetic sled. And with this, dredging the seabed in a circumscribed perimeter, along strips of 10 kilometers, back and forth in the same stretch that the calculations indicate as the most likely area of fall than what remains of the meteor, about 300 kilometers north of the Isle of Manus. A large catch is not expected, however: the meteor’s size estimate is just half a meter in diameter. Small fragments should, if luck assist them, attach themselves to the magnets to be analyzed. How to look for the classic needle in a haystack.
The second feature extraordinary of this object is the hardness: the calculations of Loeb and Siraj (in the study signed together with Tim Gallaudet of the Ocean STL Consulting company) come to the conclusion that exploding at that speed, at 18.7 kilometers of altitude, the RAM pressure (which in physics it indicates that which a body moving through a fluid is subjected to) to which it would have disintegrated is 113 MPa (megapascal). Double the size of a metallic meteorite, that is, of the most resistant material among those that make up known meteorites. This detail, combined with the fact that the search for the fragments would be a campaign led by the Galileo Society, founded by Loeb and Siraj themselves to search for traces of alien technologies in the cosmos or on Earth, obviously triggers the imagination.
And also a certain skepticism: Loeb is the physicist who has repeatedly stated (and written) that Oumouamua according to him it was not an ordinary asteroid, but an alien spaceship, due to its “strange elongated shape” and a trajectory, in his opinion, incompatible with that of a natural object, due to the anomalous acceleration. All this will be impossible to verify because Oumuamua is gone forever, unless you try to chase him around the cosmos, as he proposes to do. Initiative for Interstellar Studies with a mission submitted to NASA. An adventure that would cost, according to Loeb, about a billion dollars.
Finding bits of unknown metals using a ship could, at a much lesser cost, pay off answers to some questions. First of all: where it formed and how different are the elements (isotopes) that compose it. And above all, of what this object more resistant than the toughest meteorite is made of: “Obviously – according to what is written – this outcome does not imply that the first interstellar meteor was artificially built by a technological civilization and does not have a natural origin“. But at least the doubt and curiosity, certainly useful for raising funds (1.6 million dollars would be needed for a week of campaign), remain: “On many occasions we have seen triumphant announcements of epochal discoveries then sadly deflate on a slightly more in-depth examination – is the conclusion of Gardiol – In short, we will be able to believe it when we see the published article in the most important scientific journal in the world, if and when it deserves it “.