Jun 22, 2023 03:48 PM
https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3wwam/s...-something
EXCERPTS: Scientists are currently searching for the submerged remains of an interstellar object that crashed into the skies near Papua New Guinea in January 2014 and probably sprinkled material from another star system into the Pacific Ocean, according to an onboard diary by Avi Loeb, the Harvard astronomer who is leading the expedition.
[...] Loeb is optimistic that the crew will identify pieces of Interstellar Meteor 1 (IM1), the mysterious half-ton object that struck Earth nearly a decade ago, which he thinks could be an artifact, or “technosignature,” from an alien civilization.
[...] On Wednesday, Loeb told Motherboard that the expedition had made its biggest “breakthrough” yet with the discovery of microscopic magnetic spherules hidden in volcanic ash from a recent seabed haul. Given that fireballs are known to rain down metallic spheres, the crew had hoped to find exactly this sort of material—Loeb had even written a blog post a day earlier entitled, “Where are the Spherules of IM1?”
The origin of the spherules is not known, but an initial analysis of the composition of one of these tiny objects revealed that it was made of mostly iron with traces of magnesium and titanium, and no nickel. Loeb called this combination “anomalous compared to human-made alloys, known asteroids and familiar astrophysical sources,” in a blog post about the discovery.
“We are now on our way back to IM1’s crash site in an attempt to retrieve as many spherules as possible,” he said in the post. “With a large enough sample, we can obtain a gamma-ray spectrum that will characterize its radioactive elements and potentially date the sample.”
The team has also recovered steel shards and a strange manganese-platinum wire wire, but it will take more time and research to determine the origin of all of these finds.
“Altogether, in our ten Runs of the magnetic sled, we have encountered steel shards only in Runs 6 and 7, delineating a fairly isolated geographic area not on a major shipping lane,” Loeb said. “These shards are not likely associated with a wreck because the spatial distribution is bigger than a wreck, and not trash or we would have seen it elsewhere.”
“It is also possible that dust particles from IM1 are hidden in the vast amount of black powder that we collected so far,” he added. To that end, the team is analyzing “a large quantity of the retrieved powder with our gamma-ray spectrometer to check whether there is any spectral anomaly relative to what is expected from volcanic ash.”
Regardless of its ultimate scientific results, the interstellar treasure hunt has attracted a lot of public attention... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: Scientists are currently searching for the submerged remains of an interstellar object that crashed into the skies near Papua New Guinea in January 2014 and probably sprinkled material from another star system into the Pacific Ocean, according to an onboard diary by Avi Loeb, the Harvard astronomer who is leading the expedition.
[...] Loeb is optimistic that the crew will identify pieces of Interstellar Meteor 1 (IM1), the mysterious half-ton object that struck Earth nearly a decade ago, which he thinks could be an artifact, or “technosignature,” from an alien civilization.
[...] On Wednesday, Loeb told Motherboard that the expedition had made its biggest “breakthrough” yet with the discovery of microscopic magnetic spherules hidden in volcanic ash from a recent seabed haul. Given that fireballs are known to rain down metallic spheres, the crew had hoped to find exactly this sort of material—Loeb had even written a blog post a day earlier entitled, “Where are the Spherules of IM1?”
The origin of the spherules is not known, but an initial analysis of the composition of one of these tiny objects revealed that it was made of mostly iron with traces of magnesium and titanium, and no nickel. Loeb called this combination “anomalous compared to human-made alloys, known asteroids and familiar astrophysical sources,” in a blog post about the discovery.
“We are now on our way back to IM1’s crash site in an attempt to retrieve as many spherules as possible,” he said in the post. “With a large enough sample, we can obtain a gamma-ray spectrum that will characterize its radioactive elements and potentially date the sample.”
The team has also recovered steel shards and a strange manganese-platinum wire wire, but it will take more time and research to determine the origin of all of these finds.
“Altogether, in our ten Runs of the magnetic sled, we have encountered steel shards only in Runs 6 and 7, delineating a fairly isolated geographic area not on a major shipping lane,” Loeb said. “These shards are not likely associated with a wreck because the spatial distribution is bigger than a wreck, and not trash or we would have seen it elsewhere.”
“It is also possible that dust particles from IM1 are hidden in the vast amount of black powder that we collected so far,” he added. To that end, the team is analyzing “a large quantity of the retrieved powder with our gamma-ray spectrometer to check whether there is any spectral anomaly relative to what is expected from volcanic ash.”
Regardless of its ultimate scientific results, the interstellar treasure hunt has attracted a lot of public attention... (MORE - missing details)