An interstellar meteor struck Earth in 2014, and now scientists want to look for it at the bottom of the ocean

In 2014, an object crashed into the ocean just off the coast of Papua New Guinea. Data collected at the time indicated that the meteorite may be an interstellar object, and if so, it is only the third known such object (after Oumuamua and Borisov) and the first known to occur on of the earth exists. Launching an underwater expedition to find it would go a long way, but the scientific gain could be huge.

The interstellar object, designated CNEOS 2014-01-08, is believed to be about half a meter across, and its potentially interstellar origins were first recognized by then-PhD student Amir Siraj and Harvard professor Avi Loeb. Using catalog data on the object’s trajectory, Siraj and Loeb concluded that it could have originated from outside our solar system because of its unusually high heliocentric velocity — in other words, it was moving at speeds that suggest it might not have been related to the Gravity bound to the sun.

However, there is a catch. The data used to measure the object’s impact with Earth came from a US Department of Defense spy satellite designed to monitor terrestrial military activity. As such, the exact error readings from the measurement are a closely guarded secret — the US military is reluctant to make their satellite’s exact capabilities publicly available. But without these details, much of the scientific community understandably remains unwilling to officially classify CNEOS 2014-01-08 as an interstellar object. Siraj and Loeb’s paper therefore remains unpublished as it has not yet passed peer review.

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However, their claim was bolstered in April 2022 when Joel Mozer, Chief Scientist of the US Space Force’s Space Operations Command, reviewed the classified data in question and “confirmed that the velocity estimate reported to NASA is sufficiently accurate to indicate an interstellar trajectory.” ”

While the official scientific classification of CNEOS 2014-01-08 seems doomed to remain in limbo for now, the US Space Force statement was enough to convince Siraj and Loeb of its interstellar origin, and they are now about it proceeded to suggest ways of finding the object and studying it up close.

Much of the meteorite would have burned up during its descent into Earth’s atmosphere, likely leaving only fragments scattered across the seafloor. All hope is not lost, however, as the satellite’s tracking data combined with wind and ocean current data can yield a reasonable search area as small as 10km by 10km. More importantly, the fragments are expected to be magnetic, so a ship towing with a large magnet could potentially pick up the tiny meteorite fragments from the seafloor. Siraj and Loeb propose to do just that, and have teamed up with a marine technology consultancy to make it happen.

In conversation with universe today Last year, Loeb explained that such a search could “give us an opportunity to get our hands on the relic and find out if it’s natural, if it’s a rock, or if, you know, a small fraction of it.” [interstellar objects] could be artificial.”

Loeb has been vocal in recent years about the potential of interstellar objects like CNEOS 2014-01-08, Oumuamua, and Borisov to be artificial objects created by extraterrestrial intelligence. As leader of the Galileo project, finding evidence of intelligent life in the universe is one of his core research areas. But his more extravagant claims have drawn criticism from some of his peers in the astronomical community. In the case of CNEOS 2014-01-08, however, Loeb does not go so far as to claim that it is an extraterrestrial artifact. “This result does not imply that the first interstellar meteor was man-made by a technological civilization and not of natural origin,” he and Siraj write in their latest article outlining the ocean expedition. But it’s clear that Loeb thinks it wouldn’t hurt to find the object and take a look.

Even if it’s just a rock — which is by far the most likely explanation — that will tell us a lot about the composition of rocky matter outside our own solar system, and that in itself would be a valuable piece of new data.

Learn more:

Siraj and Loeb, “Discovery of a Meteor of Interstellar Origin” (ArXiv).

Siraj, Loeb and Gallaudet, “A Galileo Project Ocean Expedition to Retrieve Fragments of the First Large Interstellar Meteor CNEOS 2014-01-08.” (ArXiv).