According to US Space Command and Harvard scientists, Earth was struck by a 'alien meteorite' in 2014 as it came from another solar system.
Initially, it was assumed that our planet was first struck by an extrasolar space rock in 2017 – but new data from the 2014 rock pulled from the Pacific Ocean has moved that date back three years.
According to scientists, the fact that the asteroid burst into a fireball upon impact may indicate that these sorts of meteorites are frequent visitors to our Solar system.
On April 6, Space Command released a statement corroborating the findings of Harvard astronomers Amir Siraj and Abraham Loeb, stating that the meteor's velocity and trajectory indicated that it originated in another star system.
Drs Siraj and Loeb submitted a paper arguing for an extrasolar origin in 2019 on the scientific preprint service ArXiv, but it was never peer-reviewed due to its usage of data from the US Department of Defense, Vice says.
However, after the finding of Oumuamua, a big, elongated asteroid with an interstellar origin, the scientists started analyzing previous data from NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) for evidence of minor meteors that may have originated beyond the Solar System as well.
They discovered a fireball in Papua New Guinea on January 8, 2014, that was traveling at an exceptionally high speed for an object from close space.
Drs Loeb and Siraj determined that the 2014-01-08 meteor was interstellar "with 99.999 percent certainty," although more data from CNEOS sensors were necessary.
The US military employs to monitor for nuclear weapon-generated fireballs, culminating in a Space Command document signed by Joel Mozer, the US Space Operations Command's top scientist, confirming that Oumuamua was not the first interstellar visitor.
Additionally, the document dated March 1, 2022, indicated that neither the 2014 nor the 2017 asteroid would be the last visitor from beyond our stars.
Drs Sirah and Loeb calculate in their work that Earth gets hit by an extrasolar meteor around once per decade, implying that over 450 million have impacted the planet since the planet started.
They also theorized that these meteors could bring alien life with them as they wrote: “Potentially, interstellar meteors could deliver life from another planetary system and mediate panspermia.”
Dr Loeb has also proposed that Oumuamua may have been a sort of alien technology rather than an extrasolar asteroid, however, this idea has been extensively contested.
Dr Siraj wishes to organize an expedition to investigate the possibility of recovering parts of the 2014 meteorite.
He said: "It would be a big undertaking but we’re going to look at it in extreme depth because the possibility of getting the first piece of interstellar material is exciting enough to check this very thoroughly.”
Reference(s): ScientificAmerican, VICE