On January 8, 2014, a space rock about 18 inches in diameter exploded over the skies of Papua New Guinea after hurtling into Earth’s atmosphere. Now, experts have confirmed that it was a meteorite from another solar system and, therefore, it is the first known interstellar object, thus unseating Oumuamua discovered in 2017, which has become the second interstellar object to visit our planet. solar system, according to recently declassified US government data.
Oumuamua was seen traveling through our solar system possibly from another star about 200 light-years away. It became something so novel that many questions arose: was it a comet, an asteroid, an alien spacecraft…? (As controversial Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb put it.)
The first interstellar visitor
Now, several years later, the US Space Command has confirmed in a memo released last week that “a previously detected interstellar object was in fact an interstellar object.” We talk about the fireball that was seen over the skies of Papua New Guinea in 2014.
Apparently, a more detailed analysis of the event could not be completed until the data was opened up for a larger study. This first visitor from another solar system has been dubbed CNEOS 2014-01-08 and analysis of recently declassified data shows that the small 0.45-meter-wide meteorite was traveling at about 210,000 km/h, which exceeds with you grow to most of the meteorites found in our solar system.
In a study published in 2019 in the ArXiv preprint database, the authors argued that the speed of the small meteor, along with the path of its orbit, showed with 99.9% certainty that the object had originated much later. beyond our solar system, possibly “from the deep interior of a planetary system or a star in the thick disk of the Milky Way galaxy”. However, this study was never peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal.
We had to wait for the statement by Lieutenant General John E. Shaw, deputy commander of the USSC, which retroactively makes the 2014 meteorite the first interstellar object ever detected in our solar system.
Information about the space rock in question is scarce, although its details, including its coordinates over Manus Island, are recorded in the fireball database of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). POT.
three interstellar travelers
Following CNEOS 2014-01-08 and Oumuamua, the third known interstellar object to be discovered, a comet named 2I/Borisov, was detected by Crimean amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov with a telescope in August 2019 as it passed by the Sun. It is one of the most ‘pristine’ comets ever observed, meaning it has not been altered or degraded by heat and radiation from stars like our own.
The 2014 meteorite, our first interstellar traveler, is very small, but it also highlights the fact that our solar system is possibly teeming with material from other solar systems. Perhaps even other galaxies.
Referencia: US.S. Space Command
