Secret Government Info Confirms First Known Interstellar Object on Earth, Scientists Say

[sl8]

https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyp9ez/secret-government-info-confirms-first-known-interstellar-object-on-earth-scientists-say

Secret Government Info Confirms First Known Interstellar Object on Earth, Scientists Say

A small meteor that hit Earth in 2014 was from another star system, and may have left interstellar debris on the seafloor.

By Becky Ferreira
April 7, 2022, 2:50pm

An object from another star system crashed into Earth in 2014, the United States Space Command (USSC) confirmed in a newly-released memo.

The meteor ignited in a fireball in the skies near Papua New Guinea, the memo states, and scientists believe it possibly sprinkled interstellar debris into the South Pacific Ocean. The confirmation backs up the breakthrough discovery of the first interstellar meteor—and, retroactively, the first known interstellar object of any kind to reach our solar system—which was initially flagged by a pair of Harvard University researchers in a study posted on the preprint server arXiv in 2019.

Amir Siraj, a student pursuing astrophysics at Harvard who led the research, said the study has been awaiting peer review and publication for years, but has been hamstrung by the odd circumstances that arose from the sheer novelty of the find and roadblocks put up by the involvement of information classified by the U.S. government.

The discovery of the meteor, which measured just a few feet wide, follows recent detections of two other interstellar objects in our solar system, known as ‘Oumuamua and Comet Borisov, that were much larger and did not come into close contact with Earth.

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[Goonch]

1. ;-{)🖖‍

[sl8]

2. Thanks!. n/t

[3Hotdogs]

3. Does it contain Kryptonite or any elements that are native to the planets Vulcan,

or Romulan?

[MineralMan]

4. Di-Lithium Crystals?

Any of those?

[Sympthsical]

5. Reminds me of the DoD casually giving NASA two telescopes better than Hubble

"Oh, these? Yeah, they were just . . . laying around."

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/06/hey-brother-can-you-spare-a-hubble-dod-sure-have-two/258061/

"The U.S. government's secret space program has decided to give NASA two telescopes as big as, and even more powerful than, the Hubble Space Telescope. Designed for surveillance, the telescopes from the National Reconnaissance Office were no longer needed for spy missions and can now be used to study the heavens."

[sl8]

6. Well, that's interesting. Thanks. n/t

[Mr. Sparkle]

7. I wonder what the odds were of an interstellar object hitting the Earth

They must have been astronomical ... pun intended

[lagomorph777]

10. We spotted at least three insterstellar objects within a few years of building the ability to do so,

and one of them impacted. I would have to assume it's a lot more common than anybody expected.

[Mr. Sparkle]

11. Not an expert, but i would of thought that Jupiter with its huge gravitational pull

would have scooped up just about everything coming our way.

[lagomorph777]

15. That has traditionally been the belief.

But more recently, it's believed that it sends as many curveballs inward, as it intercepts or sends outward.

And all of that is based on orbiting bodies; it gets to swing the bat many times as they come around again and again.

Interstellar bodies, 999 times out of 1000, won't notice Jupiter at all. They'll zip in, one time, from some random direction, usually out of the ecliptic plane; and 3/4 of the time, not even from the same quadrant as Jupiter is in at the moment.

[lagomorph777]

8. For the first time in history, we can see these things before they hit.

We're building out systems to detect ever-smaller objects that could threaten the Earth, and see them as early as possible.

The article doesn't say how long in advance this object was detected, likely because part of the detection network are classified.

At 130,000 mph, if it had been a bit larger (say 100 feet instead of a few feet) it could have caused serious damage. That speed is about five times as fast (25 times as energetic) as a typical solar system meteor.

[SmallFry]

9. Verbiage is a bit questionable for a scientific article.

We brought interstellar “objects” back to earth in 2016.

Interstellar dust comes into our atmosphere every second, slowly making its way to earth.

If there is anything other than dust left of the meteor being discussed, I wonder how radioactive the pieces might be. Would be interesting to find a piece. Under current theories the makeup of it should be rather unsurprising. If not, could be a scientific game-changer.

[roamer65]

12. Each one of us is interstellar in original.

Every atom in us is from space.

[Mad_Machine76]

14. We are star stuff

[Mad_Machine76]

13. Guess

it's no secret anymore?