The search for the first interstellar meteor is being spearheaded by a Harvard physicist who has raised over a million dollars to probe the depths of the ocean for its fragments. Avi Loeb is planning a Pacific expedition to look for evidence of what he thinks could be alien technology, launched a billion years ago by an ancient civilization outside our solar system.
The object of Loeb’s curiosity is a meteor that came hurtling towards the earth in 2014 and exploded into tiny fragments about a hundred kilometers off the coast of Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. The trajectory of the object suggested that it originated outside our solar system.
Loeb, professor at Harvard's Center for Astrophysics, has announced an expedition to find those fragments by combing the ocean floor. The project has received $1.5 million in funding and the green light to go ahead.
According to his blog post, the object’s interstellar origins were confirmed by NASA in 2022. Loeb and his team also concluded that the meteor, labelled IM1, was tougher than all the 272 meteors in NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) catalogue.
“Intrigued by this conclusion, I established a team that designed a two-week expedition to search for the meteor fragments at a depth of 1.7 kilometers on the ocean floor,” he said.
Meteor or alien probe?
Loeb believes in the possibility that the object may be artificial in origin and wants to find its fragments so he and his team can study it further.
“It is possible that IM1 and IM2 have unusually high material strength because they were produced in the ejecta of an exploding star or in collisions of two neutron stars,” he wrote. IM2 is the name given to another interstellar meteor that was detected near Portugal in 2017.
“Alternatively, it is also possible that IM1 and IM2 are tough because they are artificial in origin, resembling our own interstellar probes but launched a billion years ago from a distant technological civilization” he added.
In an interview with NPR last year, the Harvard professor was asked what he hoped to accomplish by searching for the meteor. “The first thing that we will be able to test is whether the object came from outside the solar system because the composition would be different than all the rocks we find in the solar system,” he said. “But there is also the possibility that it will be made of some alloy that nature doesn't put together, and that would imply the object is technological.”
“My hope, if you ask what my wish is, is that if indeed it's of artificial origin, there was some component of the object that survived,” he confessed. “And if it has any buttons on it, I would love to press them.”
Loeb has said that if his team does find a sizable technological relic from the Pacific ocean, he will donate it to the Museum of Modern Art in New York to be displayed.
“This piece would represent modernity for us, even though it is a relic of ancient history for the senders,” he said.
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