Avi Loeb , the sometimescontroversialHarvard physicist who believes alien may havevisitedthe Solar System , spent last month explore the Pacific Ocean for remnant of an interstellar object .
The squad was on the James Henry Leigh Hunt for an object known as CNEOS 2014 - 01 - 08 , or sometimes Interstellar meteor 1 , which flew over Papua New Guinea in 2014 . The hurrying and trajectory of the object made some scientists surmise that it might be interstellar in bloodline . In 2022 , US Space Commanddeclassified dataand announced that they had confirmed that this was correct .
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TheGalileo Projectat Harvard , dedicated to locate alien techno - signatures , attempted to recover remnants from the object using a powerful magnet to sweep the ocean level , assuming it to be rich in atomic number 26 . The team claims to have found around 700 " spherule " during the expedition . Fifty - seven of these have now been psychoanalyze , with the results present in a preprint report , which has not yet been equal refresh .
agree toLoeb , composition depth psychology performed by the squad " designate a theme pattern of elements from outside the solar system , never seen before . " Spherules found along the presume path of the object were with child in atomic number 4 ( Be ) , lanthanum ( La ) , and U ( U ) , a form that cosmochemist Stein Jacobsen name BeLaU.
" The deliberate abundances of heavy element beyond lanthanum are systematically well beyond those of the solar system standard of CI chondrites , suggesting that ' BeLaU'-spherules arise from outside the solar system , " Loeb indite in the web log piece accompany the newspaper . " The source had a very low content of elements with chemical attraction to iron , such as Rhenium ( Re ) . The birth site of IM1 could have been a differentiate crust of an exo - planet with an iron core and a magma ocean . "
As undeniably cool as it would be to have receive fragments of an interstellar target , Loeb of course of action went one step further and throw out the ( incredibly unbelievable ) possibleness of alien involvement .
" A more exotic possibility is that this unfamiliar teemingness pattern , with uranium being nearly a thousand clip more abundant than the received solar system value , may reverberate an extraterrestrial technological descent , " Loeb add . " These rendering will be consider critically along with additional results from spherule analysis in future study . "
This conjecture ispar for the coursefor Loeb , who has irritated fellow physicist with flaky claims that the interstellar aim ' Oumuamua was in fact analien outer space probe , propelled by radiation from starlight .
“ People are grim of hearing about Avi Loeb ’s groundless claims , ” astrophysicist at Arizona State University Steve Desch told theNew York Timesin July , after Loeb float the idea that CNEOS 2014 - 01 - 08 could be technological in origin . “ It ’s pollute effective science – conflating the in effect skill we do with this farcical sensationalism and breastfeed all the O out of the room . ”
The newspaper – and future analysis of the collected spherule – will be dependent to peer review , and could yield some exciting scientific discipline . But any claims of alien engineering , until sinful proof is presented , should be taken with a Pacific Ocean of common salt .
The preprint paper is published onHarvard ’s web site .
