Meteorite balls of interstellar origin can be found in the depths of the Pacific Ocean

From the depths of the Pacific Ocean, in A A dark abyss about a mile underwatera black and silver ball that raises the curiosity of the seabed. This is the world’s first “interstellar hook”..

Research physicist Avi Loeb Strange substance And maybe you found something in ocean depths.

Mobile comet

since 4 years, Loeb was thinking of another strange thing: the cigar-shaped comet ‘Oumuamua, which silently passed Earth in October 2017, just disappear forever into the void of space. This was the first known interstellar visitor to Earth, and may have traveled around it 600,000 years to reach the planet Earth.

Loeb is known as the “Harvard hunter for aliens”.

With this comet in mind, The physicist decided to look for other cosmic anomalies. This is what prompted him to create an online catalog for Fireballs are detected around the world. From this, an alien meteorite (IM1) identified it It exploded over the Pacific Ocean 3:05 a.m. on January 9, 2014.

These parts can be rare Debris from a distant solar system? Why is this research provocative?

Rare event

The planetary scientific community has accumulated an incredible amount of knowledge about these things, but we never have Capable of studying material from another solar systemAnd the planets and asteroids in it about a distant starsaid Mark Fries, curator of cosmic dust at NASA.

Everything we know about space is beyond our own patch It comes from observing the light that was made at least 40 trillion km (25 trillion miles) – The distance to the next nearest solar systemAlpha Centuri – for our planet. The sky is simply too big to watch in its entirety all the time..

Enough crucial details were revealed in the database to pique Loeb’s interest, IM1 was advancing at an incredible speed.

So when IM1 hit the ground, Nobody noticed. The only record of its existence came from the United States government, which Sensors recorded its trajectoryand the speed and altitude as it crossed the atmosphere over the Atlantic Ocean near Portugal.

Loeb’s analysis indicates that not only was IM1 moving faster than our solar system, But it was also traveling faster than 95% of nearby stars. He thinks so Interstellar. Second, the meteorite was so solid that, instead of disintegrating in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, IM1 resisted until it reached the lower atmosphere.

The first traces of daring to search in the depths of the ocean

The search party for the Loeb meteorite has arrived aboard the Silver Star on the 14th of June, and soon reached part of the ocean around her 84 km of tropical coast From Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.

They use a combination of US military data and local earthquake readings in the Pacific region.

with your help “hook among the stars” And with over $1 million in support from the Cardano blockchain company, the team started the journey by collecting fleet control samples from their research area. The hook is designed as a coil Underwater sled They are towed behind the ship with a long rope in order to collect possible samples meteorite debrisAnd Using the points on its surface, which are strong magnets.

Although it’s been nearly a decade since meteorite debris fell into the Pacific Ocean, Loeb is at least confident that Some of these globules will still be lurking near the surface of the deep sea.s.

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

On June 21, The team found a small metallic pearl, with a diameter of about 0.3 mm. It soon became apparent that this was one of many and consisted mainly of ironAnd magnesium that it Titaniuman unusual combination.

Could this be the first human contact ever with a Materials from outside our solar system?