An interstellar traveler like ‘Oumuamua exploded to Earth in 2014

As Futura explained in a previous article on centenary of the birth of Arthur Clarke strangely coincided with the discovery on October 19, 2017 of an object unmistakably on an interstellar trajectory, the first ever detected to come from beyond our Solar system it seemed at the time namely 1I/2017 U1. But he is better known as ʻOumuamua (“ messenger who came from afar and arrived first in Hawaiian) and its amazing characteristics suggested that it could be a true interstellar probe from an advanced extraterrestrial civilization.

The vast majority of the scientific community has considered for some time now that this hypothesis has been refuted and that is why she was particularly annoyed by the insistence ofAbraham Loeb about it, as can be seen by reading the review of theastrophysicist Frank Selsis. Chairman of the Astronomy Department at Harvard University (USA) from 2011 to 2020 and very involved in the project Breakthrough Starshot — a beam-powered photonic nanoveil laser for stars closest to the Sun, in the system of Alpha Centauri –, Loeb went on to defend the ET thesis for ʻOumuamua in a book, translated by Charles Frankel and which was published by Editions du Seuil under the title The first sign of extraterrestrial intelligent life.

But before that, as Futura had explained in the previous article below which we recommend reading before continuing to read this article, Loeb had filed in 2019 on arXiv a paper with his student and colleague Amir Siraj, also a theoretical astrophysicist at Harvard University and in fact, lead author of the 2019 paper.

The two men put forward the thesis that the first object of interstellar origin had in fact been discovered on January 8, 2014. It was a small celestial body, about 0.45 meters in size, which would have exploded in theatmosphere of the Earth just above Papua New Guinea by entering its upper layers at a speed of about 210,000 km/h.

Interstellar traveler confirmed by US Space Command

However, Siraj and Loeb relied on data provided by theU.S. Space Command, that is to say the United States Space Command (USSC), one of the eleven Joint Combatant Commands of the armed forces of the United States, in charge of space operations. They therefore did not have access to all the data establishing the existence and properties of the object that fell in 2014, so that the uncertainties about the speed and the trajectory did not make it possible to establish indisputably that it was was indeed an interstellar visitor.

But after battling with the military administration using sensors to detect possible explosions of nuclear weapons in the Earth’s atmosphere (this is prohibited by a international treaty), Loeb and Siraj see their efforts rewarded since the USSC has just officially confirmed that its own scientific experts, in fact on the advice of Joel B.Mozerhad arrived at the same conclusion as the two men and that they therefore validated their thesis.

This confirmation comes in the form of an internal memo dated 1^er March 2022 and shared on Twitter this April 7 by Lt. Gen. John E. Shaw, deputy commander of the USSC.

The explosion of the small celestial body occurred not far from Manus, one of the Admiralty Islands, the fifth largest island of Papua New Guinea. Siraj wonders if oceanic expeditions would not make it possible to find on the seabed near the remains of this interstellar body, just as one can find meteorites isolated on dunes of sand in a desert or in Antarctic ice.

An interstellar meteor reportedly fell to Earth in 2014

Article of Xavier Demeersmann published on 04/21/2019

Dozens of meteorites fall to Earth every day. Harvard researchers believe they have discovered, among them, at least one meteor (they pinned three candidates) who would be of interstellar origin, that is to say who would come from elsewhere, from another planetary system like ‘Oumuamua.

Featured in the ranking of time magazine of the 25 most influential people in space, Abraham Loeb (or Avi Loeb), the esteemed head of the astronomy department at Harvard University, has made himself known to a wider audience , a few months ago, with the publication of a very noticed study where he supposes that the now famous ‘Oumuamuafirst interstellar object never discovered, is an artifact from elsewhere.

To explain his brightness so particular and his behavior, Shmuel Bialy and him do not indeed exclude the possibility that it is a probe equipped with a large and thin solar sail. A presumption that not all his colleagues share and which is controversial. “I may commit professional suicide if I’m wronghe told the newspaper. Al-Haaretz. It will give me more time to do science. But, if I’m right, it’s one of the greatest discoveries in human history.” he continued.

Note that several of his colleagues are as intrigued as he is: “These high-level personalities themselves say that this object has very special characteristics. But they don’t dare to report it publicly..

In the opinion that 1I/2017 U1 — official name of ‘Oumuamua — is not the only or even the first visitor from elsewhere in our Solar System, Avi Loeb and Amir Siraj, a Harvard student, are left in the footsteps of possible little interstellar travelers who would have ended their journey on Earth. They found three of them, one with a strong presumption that it is not native to the Solar System.

Billions of billions of interstellar meteorites across the Galaxy

Not very big — about 90 centimeters — the object entered the Earth’s atmosphere on January 8, 2014, at 5:05 p.m. UT, over the southwest Pacific, not far from the island of Manus in Papua New Guinea. It is one of the Cneos detectors (Center for Near-Earth Object Studies) who spotted it. The two researchers sifted through thirty years of data collected by the various observatories of this American program.

It was the speed of this intruder that questioned them. And it is precisely the meteorites with a high velocity that they were looking for in the archives because they are likely to have benefited from an acceleration within another system. The object was hurtling at around 216,000 km/h when it entered the atmosphere. Moreover, the direction of the space from which he came contributes to persuade them that he was not from here. For one of the other two candidates they dug up in the catalog, the two astronomers are more skeptical. Although as fast as the first, its orbit suggests that it belongs to our Solar System.

Three possible interstellar meteors — and possibly more — that have stranded on Earth (disintegrated in its atmosphere) in 30 years, or one on average every 10 years, that’s a lot over billions of years. The two researchers calculated that there would be approximately one million of these objects, for volume of 150 million cubic kilometers (a astronomical unit), throughout the Galaxy.

So, is our planet often watered by these small rocks expelled from other stars? This is a possibility taken very seriously by astronomers. “You can imagine that if these meteors were ejected from the habitable zone of a star, they could help transfer life from one planetary system to another”, points out Avi Loeb. To learn more about their topics, the author and co-author of more than 700 scientific articles would like telescopes point to the fastest meteorites as soon as they are detected in order to infer their compositions.