Scientists have analyzed interstellar material on Earth for the first time in history.
Harvard physicist Avi Loeb announced Tuesday that the hundreds of small metal fragments found in the Pacific Ocean originated outside our solar system.
The remains came from a meter-sized object that crashed off the coast of Papua New Guinea in 2014, and which Loeb claims was an alien spacecraft.
He and a team spent two weeks trawling the seafloor in June, hoping to find evidence that would support his theory.
While the announcement doesn’t confirm the presence of aliens, Loeb considers it a historic discovery “because it’s the first time humans have gotten their hands on material from a large object that arrived on Earth from outside the solar system.”
The remains came from a meter-sized object that crashed off the coast of Papua New Guinea in 2014, and which Loeb claims was an alien spacecraft.
“The success of the expedition illustrates the value of risk-taking in science, despite all odds, as an opportunity to discover new knowledge,” Loeb wrote. Medium.
Loeb and his team traveled to a site believed to have been the site of the crash of meteor IM1 nearly a decade ago.
The Harvard scientists worked closely with the US military for years to pinpoint the impact zone near Papua New Guinea, sifting through data to determine if and when the object fell from space.
The US Space Command confirmed in April 2022 that the 15-foot-wide meteorite came from another solar system, making it the first known interstellar visitor to Earth.
And this, according to Loeb, provides more evidence to support his theory.
Loeb made a name for himself for openly believing that aliens made contact with Earth.
In 2021, the physicist released a book titled “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth,” which argued that Oumuamu is not a comet or asteroid, but a light sail – a method of spacecraft propulsion.
Discovered by a telescope in Hawaii, millions of miles away, in October 2017, Oumuamua was initially thought to be Earth’s first interstellar visitor until 2022.
Harvard physicist Avi Loeb announced on Tuesday that the hundreds of small metal fragments found in the Pacific Ocean originated outside our solar system
The data from the analysis revealed that the fragments are rich in beryllium, lanthanum and uranium, along with low levels of elements with a high affinity for iron, such as rhenium. Pictured is the composition of a fragment found at the site
Loeb and his team found 700 spheres with a diameter of 0.05-1.3 millimeters in 26 runs covering a quarter-square-kilometer study area.
“The recovered spheres are being analyzed by the best instruments in the world within four laboratories of Harvard University, UC Berkeley, the Bruker Corporation and the University of Technology in Papua New Guinea – whose Vice Chancellor has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Harvard University for expedition research partnership,” Loeb wrote.
The data from the analysis revealed that the fragments are rich in beryllium, lanthanum and uranium, along with low levels of elements with a high affinity for iron, such as Rhenium – one of the rarest elements found on Earth.
“Spherules with the ‘BeLaU’ abundances were found only along the path of IM1 and not in control regions,” Loeb wrote.
“The ‘BeLaU’ elemental abundance pattern does not match terrestrial alloys, nuclear explosion fallout, magma-ocean abundances from Earth or its moon or Mars, or other natural meteorites in the solar system.”
He went on to explain that BeLaU also had an “abundance of heavy elements,” which could have come from fragments ejected from ore-collapse supernovae or neutron star mergers. This is known as ‘r-process’.
However, the combination also shows another pattern related to what is called “s-process” that can only come from an independent origin, such as Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars.
AGB stars are the final stage of evolution of low- and intermediate-mass stars powered by nuclear combustion.