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Harvard University Professor They believe the meteorite that crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 2014 is made of the kind of material one would expect to find in their favorite science fiction movie. Avi Loeb – the longest-serving chairman of Harvard University’s astronomy department – is convinced that this object could be a meteorite of alien technology or unprecedented material strength. None of this can be confirmed without physical study, so the professor plans to spend more than a million dollars on a trip that will be funded by private donors.
“This will be the first time humans get their hands on material from another star.”
Although the data now confirm that the object is of interstellar origin – the road to proving this has not been fast. Using data from government censors used primarily for national security as part of our missile defense system, Loeb and his student studied several meteors to see what stood out.
“I found a government-compiled catalog of meteors detected by our missile warning system’s government sensors. I asked my student to find out if meteors, the fastest meteors outside the solar system, could reach Earth,” he explained.
There was one thing in particular that piqued the interest of Loeb and his student, Amir Siraj. Based on the speed of the meteor and how much of the material was burned upon entry, Lobb determined that it must be made of a stronger material than steel.
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“So this one was an outlier in terms of its composition. It was also an outlier in terms of its speed outside the solar system. It moved at least twice as fast as stars move around the sun.”
Although the government has released limited information due to national security concerns – it has found something important. A paper he wrote with a student laid out what he believed to be true. But three years after he wrote his findings, a major development confirmed what he knew.
“A few years later, a letter was released from the U.S. Space Command at the Department of Defense stating that this meteor came from outside the solar system with a 99.999% confidence level.”
Armed with new evidence to confirm his discovery, Loeb decided to take action to return the object. Now he has the task of finding something too fragile on impact, leaving behind a coin-sized piece lost on the bottom of the ocean. It is a seemingly insurmountable challenge in the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. But Loeb is confident they will recover what they need.
“It’s literally a fishing trip. And what we can do is basically take the trajectory of this meteor and trace it down to the ocean floor.”
While narrowing down the position is one obstacle, Loeb still has to bring it physically.
“We’re planning to build a sled and a magnet that will cover the ocean floor on board. And we’ll go back and forth like mowing 10 kilometers of grass in the region. We’ll take the magnets, all the pieces that attract them, and then clean them up and study their collection in the lab.
Although Loeb has raised half a million dollars, he is looking for the additional million dollars needed to take a boat to the meteor explosion site off the coast of Papua New Guinea to retrieve the interstellar object. While raising the money and planning the expedition he hopes to embark on in the coming months will be no easy task – Loeb is confident the discovery will be the likes of which no human has ever seen.
“Would this be the most important scientific discovery ever made by mankind? Because if you think about it, it would change the way we think about our place in the universe.”
With science in his corner. This professor is not intimidated by critics.
“It is not a philosophical question that we live in an environment where objects are defective. They represent the surrounding technologies. We just need to use our telescopes and find out. In fact, we are not even the first to say this. Galileo Galilei said this four hundred years ago and was imprisoned Today it was going to be deleted on social media.Once I realized we got something from technology set up somewhere else.I don’t need anyone else’s approval.I don’t need likes on twitter.I just want to know what it is.
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