Physicist Avi Loeb and his team have used NASA data of meteor impacts to identify interstellar meteors. The NASA data was so good they were able to pinpoint a candidate meteor that hit near Australia.
They believe have recovered pieces of that meteor and begun analyzing parts. They believe it is interstellar and has technological elements. They have found spherules.
The fundamental question is obvious: was this first recognized interstellar object from 2014 manufactured by a technological civilization? Upon their return, they could produce an alloy in the laboratory that has the same composition as they infer for the spherules and analyze the resulting material properties.
Finding more spherules will allow us to pinpoint the meteor path and potentially seek a large object that may represent its core at the end of the path. If such an object is retrieved, its structure could inform us of its technological purpose and design.
The metallic pearl-looking spherules are embedded in the volcanic ash and so our goal from now on is to retrieve all the magnetic material available on the sled magnets in the form of black powder and then identify the metallic pearls and separate them with tweezers. Ryan Weed, Jeff Wynn, Charles Hoskinson, J.J. Siler and Amir Siraj are all engaged in this effort.
Proving that they can get the magnetic sled on the ocean floor allowed us to do it again and again and find materials from IM1’s fireball site. Proving that they can retrieve the first spherule from that material allows us now to do it again and again and find a large number of spherules from IM1 in a consistent and systematic fashion.
They are now on their way back to IM1’s crash site in an attempt to retrieve as many spherules as possible. With a large enough sample, we can obtain a gamma-ray spectrum that will characterize its radioactive elements and potentially date the sample. Constraining the travel time might allow us to identify the distance and direction of its source star given its known velocity. Our preliminary analysis implies that the composition of mostly iron with a tenth of that in magnesium and some titanium does not resemble known human-made alloys or familiar asteroids.
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He chairs the advisory board for the Breakthrough Starshot project, and is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. His new book, titled “Interstellar”, is scheduled for publication in August 2023.
Shock Resisting Steel in the Debrid Field of the First Recognized Interstellar Meteor
On Run 6 of the magnetic sled through the likely crash site of the first recognized interstellar meteor, IM1, the expedition research team recovered shards of corroded iron. At first, we thought it may be common industrial iron associated with human-made ocean trash. But when Ryan Weed ran the sample of shards through the X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) analyzer, the most likely alloy it flagged is S5 steel with titanium, which is also known as shock-resisting steel.
The yield strength of S5 steel, 1.7 GPa, is well above that of iron meteorites. This is consistent with the fact that IM1 was tougher in material strength than all other 272 meteors in the CNEOS catalog of NASA.
Most importantly, the shape of the recovered shards is nearly flat — as if they were surface layers broken off from a technological object which experienced extreme material stress. Iron meteorites break into small pieces which are melted by the fireball into spherules that rain down and are recovered in strewn fields as nearly spherical fragments.
It is possible that the fireball of IM1 resulted from the breakup of surface layers and the core of the object survived entry through the atmosphere, as expected for spacecraft.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
All I’m seeing here is wishful thinking and confirmation bias.
Spheres are very common in nature, so don’t prove anything. They even provide their own explanation: “Iron meteorites break into small pieces which are melted by the fireball into spherules”.
Flat flakes also exist in nature, for example in Mica.
The composition, even if technologically useful, still doesn’t prove a technological origin. Iron, magnesium, and titanium are all naturally-occurring elements that could come together and alloy by some natural process. Even if this alloy isn’t found naturally in our own solar system, at best that only proves that it’s not from our solar system.
Space debris çan be micro analyzed and confirmation 100% obvious that will leave no doubt weather extraterrestrial origin or man made in China !?! Hundreds of encounters daily physicly exceed interpretation from your shallow incomprehensive abilities to imagine millions of years ɓefore us !!! Fred Flintstone foot car we are in comparison to these Et’s !!!!!
So many fantastic claims, so little fantastic evidence …………..
“Grusch said he had decided to come forward as a whistle-blower, testifying under oath that there are longstanding covert programs within the U.S. government that possess crash materials of “nonhuman origin.” His claims are backed by multiple on-the-record sources from the intelligence community.”
“A top attorney involved in bringing UFO whistleblowers to Congress claimed that a crashed alien craft recovered by the US military “distorted space-time” and was “bigger on the inside,” RadarOnline.com has learned.”
See:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-leslie-kean.html
&
https://radaronline.com/p/lawyer-us-military-recovered-ufo-distorted-space-time-bigger-inside/
The whole topic of UFOs is heating up:
“A Missouri senator was “surprised” to learn how many unidentified aerial phenomena the U.S. government has come across, as lawmakers call for investigations into a whistleblower’s claims of a secret UFO program.
“The number of these is apparently huge, huge. And that is something that the government has, the best I can say about it, downplayed, if not kept from the public, for a long, long time,” said Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley.”
See:
https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/us-downplayed-number-ufo-sightings/
“ Constraining the travel time might allow us to identify the distance and direction of its source star given its known velocity. ”
What? The earth rotates once a day. You might be able to figure out the angle the object hit the earth, but unless you know the exact date and time of day of impact, that tells you nothing about the direction of the source star. That’s absurd.
They also say they want to get the age by doing radiometric dating. But they are simultaneously claiming it was artificially constructed. Radiometric dating requires that you know the initial ratios of various isotopes. But if it was artificially constructed, then the ratios could be anything that the manufacturer decided to put in it. Unless you can read the minds of the aliens, you can’t really date it that way.
They knew the trajectory via radar when it was approaching Earth. That was how they determined it was interstellar.
I’m watching this unfold with cautious optimism (as I am the stuff unfolding around the claims of David Grusch, but that’s its own rabbit hole). I hope they find something of merit. Even if they find something we built, it’d be interesting.
I’m not yet convinced that what they have so far is manufactured extraterrestrial material (though it may still be interstellar material). I need to see more data and I want them to find more, possibly larger fragments of an object.
Manus Island was the site of WW2 battles. This and the steel fragments could be debris
By debris, I mean ball bearings
It’s a good thing to start playing the Intelligent Design game in a lot of domains. There is a lot to be missed if we don’t.
That’s just considering the possibility that something might be an intentionally designed artifact rather than a result of natural processes.
In biology in includes questioning whether new diseases might not be artificially designed.
The more mature this sort of examination gets the better it will be at detecting important examples we’d otherwise miss.
It’s very true of suspected exobiology. Is it definitely non-terrestrial, then is is naturally evolved or is it intelligently designed?
If some asteroid had mostly iron and some magnesium and titanium that doesn’t make it an alien manufactured asset.
Avi Loeb ? Come on, dude, You should now better…
You shouldn’t assume that all the debris from whatever it was are magnetic. Indeed, if it was of alien origin, the most interesting bits would likely be the ones that weren’t magnetic.
Agreed. If they find things that aren’t magnetic, I’ll be very curious. If they find a large chunk of something more anomalous, then things will get more fun, so to speak. Not that this in itself isn’t an adventure I’d love to be on. Just the attempt is exciting enough for me.
I don’t assume that extraterrestrials would have a need for magnetic parts unless they were near our level of advancement. If that’s the case, it may be possible that if we find material they created, those materials are millions of years old and that their civilization is defunct; at least in whatever form it was in when the materials were created.
See something round? Assume it’s alien technology. (People believe the moon is an alien satellite)
See fractured bedding planes making 90 degree angles? Well nature can’t make 90 degree angles because we say it can’t so these must be bricks from Atlantis.
It’s not aliens.
Yes. Thanks.
For everyone that believe in alien spaceships and probes crashing: you postulate an advanced civilization capable of interstellar travel but with landing capabilities orders of magnitudes lower than our current human aviation with crashes in the order of one per million. Unless you assume that many millions ufo visit us every year…
This is assuming it wasn’t intentionally crashed. We crashed the deployment phase of landers intentionally. Because they weren’t the main part of the probe. Same could be for this.