In January 2014, a meteor entered Earth’s environment within the Western Pacific, as evidenced by obvious vibrational signatures of the occasion in a seismic station in Papua New Guinea. Final yr, scientists declared rubble recovered from the ocean flooring because the rejectamenta of that occasion (and a few even speculated it was a type of alien know-how). However now, one other staff provides a distinct interpretation: the vibrations had been brought on by a truck on a close-by highway, driving by on the similar time the meteor plummeted via the environment. What’s extra, the rocky bits discovered on the Pacific flooring weren’t from this meteor, the staff concluded, which possible entered the ocean about 100 miles from the unique search space.
“The sign modified instructions over time, precisely matching a highway that runs previous the seismometer,” mentioned Benjamin Fernando, a planetary seismologist at Johns Hopkins who led the analysis. The study will be presented subsequent week on the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Convention in Houston.
“It’s actually tough to take a sign and make sure it isn’t from one thing,” Fernando added. “However what we are able to do is present that there are many alerts like this, and present they’ve all of the traits we’d anticipate from a truck and not one of the traits we’d anticipate from a meteor.”
Meteors are chunks of house particles enter Earth’s environment. They arrive in lots of sizes and styles and may clue scientists into the historical past of the photo voltaic system and the origins of water on Earth. The biggest of this century was the Chelyabinsk meteorite that exploded over Russia in 2013, shattering home windows, setting off automobile alarms, and injuring about 1,600 individuals. Not all meteors are completely international, although; final yr, a bunch of researchers studied a meteorite that landed within the Sahara Desert in 2018 concluded it actually originated from Earth.
Preliminary evaluation of the meteor fall was carried out with knowledge from the close by seismometer AU MANU on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. That evaluation, published in September 2023, concluded the meteorite was of interstellar origins and fell into the ocean simply north of the island.
However within the new paper, Fernando’s staff relied on knowledge from sound stations in Australia and Palau, initially constructed to detect the tremors of nuclear checks. That knowledge indicated that the meteor possible fell over 100 miles from the place preliminary searches for the house rock had been carried out.
“Localisation of the strewn area is reliant on a single station and a sign with no clear phases,” the researchers wrote. “Subsequently, we take into account it to be at finest extremely overstated and at worst fully faulty.”
Avi Loeb, a prominent Harvard researcher and proponent of the concept the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua might have been an alien probe, speculated that the recovered bits of spherical rock could possibly be alien know-how. However that the fabric is just not associated to the 2014 fireball, primarily based on the current staff’s numbers.
“No matter was discovered on the seafloor is completely unrelated to this meteor, no matter whether or not it was a pure house rock or a bit of alien spacecraft—though we strongly suspect that it wasn’t aliens,” Fernando mentioned.
A staff led by Loeb will even be presenting their findings, which characterize the composition and potential origin of the 850 spherules, in subsequent week’s convention.
Fernando’s staff concluded that the spherules are certainly meteorites, or a mix of meteorite and terrestrial materials, however not associated to the 2014 meteor fall.
The reality is on the market—whether or not on the backside of the ocean or within the knowledge collected because the meteor fell. And even when the findings aren’t as out-of-this-world as alien know-how, discussing all potentialities and reviewing the information via the scientific course of might tie a neat little bow on this meteoritic saga.
Extra: 10 Years Ago Today, the Chelyabinsk Meteor Exploded Over Russia
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