The Story:
According to an astrophysicist affiliated with Harvard University, an interstellar object crash-landed off the coast of Papua New Guinea back in 2014 may be a landmark in world history — for more than just our world. Harvard’s Dr. Avi Loeb, who studied this object in 2014 in collaboration with a former student of his, Dr. Amir Siraj, has raised the possibility this was no mere meteor, not even a meteor that must have originated from a different solar system (though it was at least that.) This may be a “we are not alone” moment.
Significance:
The U.S. Space Command says that most of the 2014 meteor burnt up in the atmosphere and that only the debris fell into the ocean.
But Loeb isn’t convinced that is all it was, or is.
Strange New Worlds:
In an essay written for a technology-news website, The Debrief, Loeb, expanding on his earlier research with Siraj, wrote that he is now working out a plan for an expedition to explore the region of the crash, a couple of kilometers deep.
His hope is that “we could place our hands around sizeable chunks of interstellar matter and examine its composition and nature” and that it may prove “unambiguously artificial in origin.”
