A prominent astrophysicist is refusing to rule out the possibility of objects found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean coming from another planet – or even being a piece of alien technology.
Last week, Harvard professor Avi Loeb revealed his analysis of hundreds of spherules collected by his team in the region where meteorite IM1 was known to have crashed.
An unusually rare abundance of beryllium (Be), lanthanum (La), and uranium (U), named BeLaU, suggests they are unlike any meteorites seen before, and do not hail from our own solar system.
The findings have yet to be peer reviewed, but have generated much debate across the scientific community.
‘This has come from another star and is, potentially, part of a planet from another star system,’ said Dr Phil Sutton, an astrophysicist at the University of Lincoln.
‘The most likely explanation is that an object similar to what wiped out the dinosaurs here on Earth hit a planet in another star system and sent some material out from the core and magma ocean which has then melted together in the impact.
‘This shrapnel could have been ejected with such force that it was moving fast enough to escape the star system it was from, perhaps aided by a slingshot from other planets. I think that that is probably the most plausible explanation.’
IM1, also known as CNEOS 2014-01-08 by Nasa’s Centre for Near Earth Object Studies, was recorded travelling at 28 miles per second, much faster than other meteors.
Its unusual unbound orbit, meaning it was simply passing through the solar system rather than around it, prompted US Space Command, part of the Department of Defense, to issue its own statement confirming IM1 was of interstellar origin.
However, it did not speculate further on whether it was more than a meteorite, or where it may have come from.
‘The really exotic idea is the talk about technological things that have been manufactured as opposed to natural objects,’ said Dr Sutton, speaking to The Telegraph.
Reflecting on the fact that humans have already sent out probes searching for alien life, Professor Sutton noted others could have done the same.
‘What if another civilisation found us before we found them, and sent probes out? That in itself is perfectly plausible because that’s how we would do it, in my opinion.
‘I am a scientist and I am also open-minded to a lot of possibilities. I don’t think you can rule out that it could be an alien spacecraft. Most people will scoff at the idea and say it is utterly ridiculous.’
Writing on his Medium blog last week when unveiling his results, Professor Loeb said: ‘I could have decided not to pursue this project because of the extreme pushback from “experts” on space rocks who were “sick about hearing Avi Loeb’s wild claims”, according to a New York Times article and a New York Times Magazine profile.
‘I wish these astronomers happiness and prosperity. Now that we discovered spherules with an extra-solar composition near IM1’s path, they better retract their published claim that the US Space Command overestimated IM1’s speed by a large factor and that IM1 was a stony meteorite from the solar system.
‘We now know that IM1 was interstellar. Instead of rejecting the data, they would be better off revising their model.’
Not everyone is yet convinced. Astronomer Royal Lord Martin Rees said Professor Loeb’s claims are ‘over-hyped already’.
While noting the results were ‘interesting but unsurprising’, given the ‘zillions of asteroid-like objects’ in interstellar space, speaking to The Telegraph he said: ‘There’s minimal justification for hype about it being ‘artificial’ – and even less for Loeb’s other claims.’
Professor Monica Grady, professor of planetary and space sciences at The Open University, has noted that while the spherules may be from space, perhaps from a supernova, they could also have originated closer to home.
‘The Marshall Islands are only a few hundred kilometres or so from the region where Loeb searched,’ she told The Telegraph.
‘The Islands were the site of 67 nuclear tests by the US between 1946 and 1958, and there is still a legacy from the radiation damage caused by the tests. The spherules could be fallout from the nuclear tests – produced by a human-generated supernova.’
Professor Grady has offered to do her own analysis of the spherules to investigate whether this could be the case.
Travelling to Papua New Guinea in June, Professor Loeb and his team used a sledge full of magnets to scrape the seafloor near the meteor crash site.
Covering runs of roughly seven miles, they went through the crash area 26 times and discovered 50 spherules suspected to be interstellar material.
The researchers returned the tiny pieces to Harvard, alongside tubes of volcanic ash from the site and control objects from adjacent areas.
The team has since analysed the material under electron microscopes at UC Berkeley – and found that inside the spherules are more spherules.
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