Micropsic remnants of what could be an extraterrestrial object that crashed into the Pacific Ocean nearly a decade ago were recovered by a team of scientists.
In total, 50 microscopic spherules that look like specs of dust and weigh a collective 35 milligrams were collected during a “historic” expedition off the coast of Papua New Guinea, said Harvard Professor Avi Loeb, who discovered a “runaway fireball” in 2014 that exploded in Earth’s lower atmosphere before falling into the water.
The object — labeled “IM1” — “is actually tougher and has material strength that is higher than all the space rocks that were cut along by NASA,” Loeb told Fox News Digital in an exclusive video interview from the expedition boat. “That makes it quite unusual.
“Given IM1’s high speed and anomalous material strength, its source must have been a natural environment different from the solar system, or an extraterrestrial technological civilization.”
Avi Loeb holds the 10-gram iron peanut that he retrieved from the sled magnet in Run 15 on June 23, 2023. (Avi Loeb/Medium.com)
An Earth-miniature spherule from Run 14 with a mass that is 31 orders of magnitude smaller than that of Earth. Its location indicates that it likely came from the fireball of the first recognized interstellar meteor, IM1. (Avi Loeb/Medium.com)
But the collected materials are so small they can only be seen through a microscope, he said. That’s how the team learned they were spherical and “perfectly round.”
“My daughter asked me if she could put one on a necklace, but I told her, ‘It’s too small to thread,'” Loeb said with a smile.
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But when studied through a microscope, the objects appear to look like a molten rain drops. He compared them to blood droplets that he said will hopefully lead back to where the object originated.
“This could be the first time humans put their hands on interstellar material,” Loeb said. “This has never been done before. We never received a package at our doorstep from a cosmic neighbor.”
WATCH AVI LOEB’S INTERVIEW FROM A BOAT ON THE PACIFIC OCEAN
They were collected off the ocean floor with essentially a giant magnet, and Loeb said the objects only appeared along the trajectory of the “fireball’s” path.
The expedition will come to a close by the end of the week, and the team will analyze the collected materials’ elemental and isotopic composition and then report the data in a paper submitted to a peer-reviewed journal, Loeb wrote in his most recent Medium essay.
“The interpretation will be left to follow-up papers,” he wrote in the latest of his 33 essays. “In response to the nay-sayers we say nothing other than show our data in our first publication. One cannot argue with facts, only with interpretations.”
But no matter what the conclusion is, the trip was “historic” and “successful,” Loeb said. “We want to answer the question, ‘Are we alone?’”
PHOTO GALLERY
VIDEO TOUR OF THE DECK AND OUTSIDE OF THE BOAT
The object was originally classified as a meteor, but the object’s speed and trajectory were “outliers” that suggested it originated outside the solar system, said Loeb, who authored a paper about the object with his student Dr. Amir Siraj.
Last April, Space Force’s Space Operations Command officially confirmed their findings to NASA, which set the expedition planning in motion.
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“Frankly, a lot of people said we would never be successful, but we were nevertheless willing to take that chance, and we got amazing results,” Loeb said.
In the beginning of the expedition, the crew hit some hard times, and it seemed at like the mission wasn’t going to bear fruit.
VIDEO TOUR INSIDE THE BOAT AND LAB
He said one of the crew members brought six champagne bottles, and “I asked him, ‘Why did you do that?’ And he said, ‘I’m optimistic.’
Fittingly, Loeb’s last essay was titled, “A Toast of Champagne for Fifty IM1 Spherules and Beyond!” with a picture of Loeb and Art Wright staring out at the sunset.
VIDEO: MEET THE CREW
Sunset at the successful conclusion of the Interstellar Expedition. Art Wright (left) and Avi Loeb (right), share their affection for IM1’s site in the Pacific Ocean on June 27, 2023 (Avi Loeb/Medium.com)
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“This is all been very exciting. I didn’t know what to expect,” Loeb said. “But we’re learning about what arrived at our doorstep from outer space, beyond the solar system, from the ocean floor by looking through a microscope instead of a telescope.
“I think it’s a completely new window into the universe.”
