Cue the X Files theme music. A controversial astrophysicist believes pieces of an alien spacecraft crashed into the Pacific Ocean eight years ago.
And remnants probably still are somewhere at the bottom of the ocean, according to Avi Loeb.
A recent US Space Command report acknowledged that a meteor from another star system crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 2014. The agency determined that the object, which was about a meter long, streaked across the sky near the coast of Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. And the agency said the meteor is the first confirmed object from another solar system to come into ours. Emphasis on confirmed.
Alien Object Traveled at 100,000 MPH Before It Crashed in Pacific Ocean
Two scientists, including Loeb, who study such things, determined that the meteor was unusual because of its high speed and its path across the sky. Those traits suggested the object came from interstellar space. The meteor traveled at about 100,000 miles an hour.
Loeb believes the object could be “unambiguously artificial in origin.”
“Our discovery of an interstellar meteor heralds a new research frontier,” Loeb, a Harvard astronomer, wrote for The Debrief. “The fundamental question is whether any interstellar meteor might indicate a composition that is unambiguously artificial in origin. … Better still, perhaps some technological components would survive the impact.”
So Loeb wants an expedition to look for the object. He thinks that magnets can find the alien object. Pieces could still be buried within a 10-kilometer area in the Pacific Ocean.
Initially, Scientists Thought First Interstellar Object Spotted in 2017
Scientists believed that the first interstellar object detected in our solar system in October, 2017. They called that object 1I/’Oumuamua. The Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii spotted the object. Since it was passing out of the solar system, researchers didn’t have much time to study it. They could tell it was flying end over end. And they likened the shape to a “giant pink fire extinguisher.” The instruments that could spot Oumuamua, which means scout in Hawaiian, got a glimpse of it 34 times over a span of 11 days. It was big enough to fit inside a football field. And as it gradually became too dim to be detected anymore, it strangely accelerated away.
Loeb insisted that Oumuamua was technology sent by aliens. He wrote a book called ‘Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth, about it last year. “What would happen if a caveman saw a cellphone?” Loeb wrote in his book. “He’s seen rocks all his life, and he would have thought it was just a shiny rock.”
Loeb is far from the only person who thinks we’ve been visited by aliens. You can read stories about others here and here.
The MARGO observatory in Crimea, Ukraine, observed a second interstellar object in 2019. It was named “2I/Borisov” after astronomer Gennady Borisov, who built the telescope and first observed the comet.
