NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / J.  da Silva / Space Engine

The mysterious Oumuamua elongated object may be chronologically the first known interstellar object to be found in our solar system, but it is now clear that a piece of cosmic debris that struck our atmosphere a few years earlier was also from very deep space. In 2019, two of the Harvard researchers who studied Oumuamua in depth wrote a new paper claiming that an extremely fast meteorite that opened a path in the atmosphere in 2014 was also interstellar. Its impact record and clues to its unusual origins have been hidden in public view in a NASA fireball database for years. “Its high … velocity suggests a possible origin from the deep interior of a planetary system or a star in the galaxy’s thick disk,” said student summary work by Amir Siraj and veteran astronomer Avi Loeb. However, as Siraj recently told Vice, peer review and publication of the work were postponed because the U.S. military had sorted out some of the data needed to confirm the scientists’ calculations. This bureaucratic block now seems to have broken. An unusual note from the US space agency to the head of NASA science was shared via the USSC 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 the chief scientist of @ussfspoc, Dr. “Moser, to confirm that an interstellar object that had previously been identified was indeed an interstellar object, a confirmation that helped the wider astronomical community.” pic.twitter.com/PGlIONCSrW – US Space Administration (@US_SpaceCom) April 7, 2022 “Dr. Joel Moser, chief scientist of the Space Operations Administration … examined the Department of Defense’s analysis of additional data on this finding,” the memo said. “Dr. Moser has confirmed that the speed estimate reported to NASA is accurate enough to indicate an interstellar orbit.” The meteorite is estimated to have been relatively small, perhaps about the size of a microwave oven. This means that the vast majority of it probably burned in the atmosphere and any remaining pieces fell into the Pacific Ocean.
However, Siraj is considering looking for any remaining pieces on the ocean floor that Loeb believes could house life elements from other stellar systems. “The reported meteorite entered the solar system at a speed of 60 km / s [134,216 mph]”Loeb told me in 2019.” Such a high ejection velocity can only be produced in the innermost nuclei of planetary systems – inside the Earth’s orbit around a star like the sun, but in the habitable zone of dwarf stars. thus allowing such objects to transfer life from their mother planets ”.
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5:01 Since then, Loeb has become something of a controversial figure in scientific circles because he claims that the “simplest explanation” for Oumuamua’s origin is that it was created by extraterrestrial intelligence.
It’s a difficult case to prove, as Oumuamua is currently rapidly moving away from us in deep space. Similarly, the chances of finding a meteorite at the bottom of the ocean are about as good as waiting for ET to appear in person at Harvard.