It's not lost on Loeb how significant of a discovery he could have on his hands, the implications of which would fundamentally alter humanity's understanding of the universe and our place in it. The team hopes to complete a preliminary analysis at three laboratories at Harvard, in Germany and at the University of California, Berkeley, the findings of which Loeb said will be incorporated into a paper that will be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal within the month. The expedition team recently held its first meeting to plan and put together a scientific paper to describe the findings, Loeb said. Robotic arms: Japanese researchers develop wearable robotic arms: See how they look What's next? "This operation has produced excellent science and I hope captures the imagination of the general public for the pursuit of intelligent life in the universe." "We've been looking for something the size of a watermelon in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and somehow managed to find some fragments," according to a statement from, American entrepreneur Charles Hoskinson, who funded the expedition. In other words, is it remnants of an alien spaceship? The fundamental question scientists hope to answer is whether the meteor was natural in origin, or artificially-made. The crew brought the 50 spherules to the Harvard College Observatory for further study. After the discovery, the team continued to find more spherules.Ī preliminary analysis of the spherules' composition suggested they do not match commonly manufactured alloys or natural meteorites in our solar system, Loeb said. A member of the team observed through the microscope a "beautiful metallic marble of sub-millimeter size and sub-milligram mass," Loeb wrote. "As we scooped the magnets, the most abundant material attached to them was a black powder of volcanic ash," he wrote on .īut after a week at sea, the breakthrough Loeb had been seeking finally came. Loeb said it took days to get the magnetic sled on the ocean floor and a few more days after that to understand just what the crew collected along the expected path of the meteor - about 53 miles off the coast of Manus Island.
ABACUS TECHNOLOGY BOSTON FULL
Between June 14-28, the crew searched over 108 miles of the ocean floor by combing it with a sled full of magnets attached to their boat. The $1.5 million expedition that Loeb led was to recover the fragments left over from the explosion on the floor of the Pacific Ocean at its crash site near Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. Space Command further confirmed in a 2022 letter to NASA that the object - deemed interstellar meteor, IM1 - came from another solar system. Loeb in 2019 identified the meteor's interstellar origin in a paper he co-wrote with Harvard undergraduate student Amir Siraj. Though too small to be noticed by telescopes through its reflection of sunlight, its collision with Earth generated a bright fireball recorded by U.S.
Originating from outside the solar system, the meteor moved at a speed two times faster than nearly all of the stars in the vicinity of the sun, Loeb said. The fragments the team uncovered are believed to be from a basketball-sized meteorite that in 2014 slammed into the Earth’s atmosphere and into the western Pacific Ocean. The hunt for an interstellar meteor yields surprising findings "Our findings open a new frontier in astronomy of studying what lies outside the solar system through microscopes rather than telescopes, said Avi Loeb, a professor and astrophysicist at Harvard University, who led the expedition as its chief scientist. Depending on the findings, the objects could be the first time that humanity has found solid evidence of interstellar beings. The spheres - which are so miniscule that they require a microscope to see - require further testing to determine whether they're natural or technological in nature. 'Internet apocalypse': How NASA's solar-storm studies could help save the web Last month, a crew aboard a boat called the Silver Star embarked on an expedition to Papua New Guinea with the mission of recovering fragments from a mysterious meteor that had crashed into Earth in 2014.ĭuring the two-week excursion, the team scoured over 100 miles of ocean bed before recovering 50 tiny spheres composed of a metallic substance they say is unmatched to any existing alloys in our solar system.
An astrophysicist at Harvard University believes he may have found proof of extraterrestrial life not by studying the vast night sky, but by combing the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
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