Meteor spheres of interstellar origin can be found in the depths of the Pacific Ocean

From the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, in a dark abyss about a mile underwatera curious black and silver sphere agitates the bottom of the sea. This is the world’s first “interstellar hook”.

Physicist Avi Loeb researches alien material and may have found something in the ocean depths.

the traveling comet

4 years ago, Loeb was thinking of another strange object: a cigar-shaped comet Oumuamua, which silently passed Earth in October 2017, to disappear forever into the void of space. He was the first known interstellar visitor from Earth, who may have traveled about 600,000 years to reach planet Earth.

Loeb is known as “The Harvard Alien Hunter”.

With this comet in mind, the physicist decided to look for other cosmic anomalies. And that’s what led him to create, with his team of university students, an online catalog of fireballs detected around the world. From there, he identified a strange meteorite (IM1) which exploded over the Pacific Ocean at 3:05 a.m. on January 9, 2014.

These rare fragments could be debris from a distant solar system? And why is the quest so challenging?

a rare event

The planetary scientific community has amassed an incredible body of knowledge about these objects, but we have never been able to study material from another solar systemplanets and asteroids found in around a distant starsaid Marc Fries, cosmic dust curator at NASA.

Everything we know about space beyond our own patch comes from the observation of light which makes at least 40 trillion km (25,000 billion kilometres) – the distance to the next nearest solar systemAlpha Centuri – to our planet. The sky is simply too big to be watched in its entirety, all the time..

Enough crucial details had been discovered in the database to pique Loeb’s interest, IM1 was moving at an incredible speed.

So when IM1 hit Earth, nobody noticed. The only record of its existence has come from the US government, whose sensors recorded its trajectoryits speed and altitude as it passed through the atmosphere over the Atlantic Ocean near Portugal.

Loeb’s analysis suggests that IM1 was not only moving faster than our own solar system, but it also traveled faster than 95% of nearby stars. He thinks it’s interstellar. Second, the meteorite was extremely hard, instead of disintegrating in Earth’s upper atmosphere, IM1 resisted until it reached the lower atmosphere.

The first traces of daring research in the depths of the ocean

Loeb’s meteor search team has arrived aboard the Silver Star on June 14, and soon reached part of the ocean about 84 km from the tropical coast from Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.

They use a combination of US military data and local seismological readings over the Pacific region.

With the help of your “interstellar hook” and over $1 million in backing from blockchain firm Cardano, the team began the journey by collecting fleet control samples in their research area. The hook is designed as a underwater sled and is towed behind the ship by a long rope, being able to take samples of possible meteor debris, using the dots on its surface, which are powerful magnets.

Although nearly a decade has passed since the meteor debris fell into the Pacific Ocean, Loeb is confident that at least some of these spherules will always be hidden near the surface of the deep sea.r.

What if the IM1 contained a magnetic material like iron – which is commonly found in meteorites – the plan was that some of these tiny particles could be captured.

June 21st, the team found a small metallic bead, about 0.3 mm in diameter. It soon became apparent that it was one of many and was made up mostly of iron, magnesium It is titaniuman unusual combination.

Could this be the first contact humans have ever had with a material outside our solar system?