In this illustration, an asteroid is shown in the foreground in the lower left corner. The two bright spots above it on the left are the Earth (right) and the Moon (left). The sun appears on the right.
NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / J. da Silva / Space Engine
The mysterious elongated object Oumuamua will probably enter the annals of science as the first known interstellar object to be seen in our solar system, but it is now clear that the few space debris that hit our atmosphere a few years earlier also come from many deep space.
In 2019, two Harvard researchers who studied Oumuamua in depth prepared a new document claiming that an extremely fast meteorite that traversed the atmosphere in 2014 was also interstellar. The record of its impact and hints of its unusual origins have been hidden in a NASA fireball database for years.
“Its high … speed suggests a possible origin from the deep interior of a planetary system or star in the thick disk of the Milky Way galaxy,” said a summary of the article by student Amir Siraj and veteran astronomer Avi Loeb.
However, as Siraj recently told Vice, the peer review and publication of the document was postponed because the US military has classified some of the data needed to confirm the scientists’ calculations.
This bureaucratic congestion now seems to have been broken.
An unusual note from the US space command to NASA’s science supervisor was shared on the USSC’s Twitter account last week after Deputy Commander Lt. Gen. John Shaw revealed his existence at the annual Colorado Space Symposium.
6 / “I had the pleasure of signing a note with @ussfspoc’s chief scientist, Dr. Moser, to confirm that a previously discovered interstellar object is indeed an interstellar object, a confirmation that has helped the wider astronomical community.” Pic.twitter .com / PGliONCSrW
– US Space Command (@US_SpaceCom) April 7, 2022
“Dr. Joel Moser, chief scientist of the Space Operations Command … reviewed the analysis of additional data available to the Department of Defense related to this discovery,” the note said. “Dr. Moser confirmed that the velocity estimate reported to NASA is accurate enough to indicate an interstellar trajectory.”
The meteorite is thought to have been relatively small, perhaps the size of a microwave oven. This means that most of it has probably burned up in the atmosphere and all other particles have fallen into the Pacific Ocean.
However, Siraj is exploring the possibility of looking for any other parts of the ocean floor that Loeb says may contain evidence of life from other star systems.
“The reported meteor entered the solar system at a speed of 60 km / s [134,216 mph]”Loeb told me in 2019. Such a high rate of ejection can be produced only in the innermost nuclei of planetary systems – internally in Earth’s orbit around a star like the sun, but in the habitable zone of dwarf stars, therefore allows such objects to bring life from their parent planets. ”
Now playing: Watch this: Questions and answers with Harvard’s Avi Loeb about our supposed alien …
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Since then, Loeb has become a controversial figure in scientific circles for claiming that the “simplest explanation” for Oumuamua’s origins is that he was created by an alien mind.
This is a hypothesis that will be difficult to prove, as Oumuamua is currently moving away from us into deep space. Similarly, the chances of finding a meteorite particle on the ocean floor are as good as just waiting for ET to just show up in person at Harvard.
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