A second verdict has been made on the mystery debris hoped to be evidence of alien technology, and the answer is… it’s coal dust.
In June, Harvard professor and ‘UFO hunter’ Avi Loeb led a team to the Pacific in search of a meteorite crash site, hoping to prove it came from beyond our solar system.
Searching the Pacific Ocean floor where the meteorite IM1 was thought to have crashed on January 8, 2014, the team found hundreds of ‘spherules’, small round metallic balls measuring less than a millimetre, which they hoped were evidence of the meteorite.
In analysis published in September, Professor Loeb claimed the spherules’ unusual chemical composition suggested they were in fact from another solar system – or possibly a piece of alien technology.
The claims were met with skepticism by the scientific community, and while Professor Loeb’s paper has not yet been peer reviewed, a recent study published in the journal Research Notes of the AAS argues the spherules are actually remnants of the coal industry – basically blobs of coal dust.
‘Contents of nickel, beryllium, lanthanum and uranium are examined in the context of a known [human] source of contamination, and found to be consistent with coal ash as suggested from a publicly available coal chemical composition database,’ said author Patricio A Gallardo, from the University of Chicago.
‘The meteoritic origin is disfavoured.’
Professor Loeb’s argument centred on the unusually rare abundance of the elements beryllium (Be), lanthanum (La), and uranium (U), named BeLaU. He said this suggests they are unlike any meteorites seen before, and do not hail from our own solar system.
While Dr Gallardo notes the high levels of the three elements, he maintains they are similar to that generated by the burning of coal.
‘Chemical composition analyses revealed consistency with coal fly ash, a waste product of the combustion of coal in power plants and steam engines,’ he said.
However, Professor Loeb is not alone in his belief about the spherules.
Dr Phil Sutton, an astrophysicist from the University of Lincoln, agrees the strange composition could prove they were from another solar system.
‘This has come from another star and is, potentially, part of a planet from another star system,’ he said, speaking to The Telegraph.
‘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.
Despite the official designation, others are still unsure the spherules have such an exotic origin – or even a cosmic one.
Speaking in September, Professor Monica Grady, professor of planetary and space sciences at The Open University highlighted the proximity of the site to early nuclear testing.
‘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.’
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