CNEOS 2014-01-08 on:
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Every Recorded Meteorite Impact on Earth
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CNEOS 2014-01-08 is an
Amir Siraj, one of the astronomers who reported the finding of the purported interstellar meteorite, noted "We are currently investigating whether a mission to the bottom of the
(as well as in interviews) they described the expedition interstellar object
An interstellar object is an astronomical object (such as an asteroid, a comet, or a rogue planet, but not a star) in interstellar space that is not gravitationally bound to a star. This term can also be applied to an object that is on an interst ...
reported in June 2019 by astronomers Amir Siraj and Abraham Loeb, and confirmed by the United States Space Command
United States Space Command (USSPACECOM or SPACECOM) is a unified combatant command of the United States Department of Defense, responsible for military operations in outer space, specifically all operations 100 kilometers (62 miles) and grea ...
in April 2022. The discovery was publicized in 2019 in a preprint
In academic publishing, a preprint is a version of a scholarly or scientific paper that precedes formal peer review and publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly or scientific journal. The preprint may be available, often as a non-typeset version ...
announcing a meteor
A meteoroid () is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space.
Meteoroids are defined as objects significantly smaller than asteroids, ranging in size from grains to objects up to a meter wide. Objects smaller than this are classified as mic ...
detected on 8 January 2014 near the northeast coast of Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
.
Discovery and confirmation
According to the researchers, the meteor originated from an unboundhyperbolic orbit
In astrodynamics or celestial mechanics, a hyperbolic trajectory or hyperbolic orbit is the trajectory of any object around a central body with more than enough speed to escape the central object's gravitational pull. The name derives from the f ...
with a confidence of 99.999%. The interstellar candidate was found in data from the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies. The estimated speed
In everyday use and in kinematics, the speed (commonly referred to as ''v'') of an object is the magnitude of the change of its position over time or the magnitude of the change of its position per unit of time; it is thus a scalar quantity ...
of the meteor, around , was likely produced in the innermost cores of another stellar system. A 2019 study by Jorge I. Zuluaga published as a research note by the American Astronomical Society concluded that even if the direction were completely unknown, the probability
Probability is the branch of mathematics concerning numerical descriptions of how likely an Event (probability theory), event is to occur, or how likely it is that a proposition is true. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and ...
that CNEOS 2014-01-08 was hyperbolic
Hyperbolic is an adjective describing something that resembles or pertains to a hyperbola (a curve), to hyperbole (an overstatement or exaggeration), or to hyperbolic geometry.
The following phenomena are described as ''hyperbolic'' because they ...
would still be 48%.
Confirmation was originally stymied by the problem that crucial information quantifying the accuracy of the U.S. government's data is not publicly available. However, in 2022, the United States Space Command divulged that data on the meteor
A meteoroid () is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space.
Meteoroids are defined as objects significantly smaller than asteroids, ranging in size from grains to objects up to a meter wide. Objects smaller than this are classified as mic ...
velocity
Velocity is the directional speed of an object in motion as an indication of its rate of change in position as observed from a particular frame of reference and as measured by a particular standard of time (e.g. northbound). Velocity i ...
is "sufficiently accurate to indicate an interstellar trajectory".
Search for fragments
Amir Siraj, one of the astronomers who reported the finding of the purported interstellar meteorite, noted "We are currently investigating whether a mission to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...
off the coast of Manus Island
Manus Island is part of Manus Province in northern Papua New Guinea and is the largest of the Admiralty Islands. It is the fifth-largest island in Papua New Guinea, with an area of , measuring around . Manus Island is covered in rugged jungles ...
, in the hopes of finding fragments of the 2014 meteor, could be fruitful or even possible."preprint
In academic publishing, a preprint is a version of a scholarly or scientific paper that precedes formal peer review and publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly or scientific journal. The preprint may be available, often as a non-typeset version ...plan
A plan is typically any diagram or list of steps with details of timing and resources, used to achieve an objective to do something. It is commonly understood as a temporal set of intended actions through which one expects to achieve a goal ...
by The Galileo Project
The Galileo Project is an international scientific research project to systematically search for extraterrestrial intelligence or extraterrestrial technology on and near Earth and to identify the nature of anomalous Unidentified Flying Objects/Un ...
to retrieve small fragments of the meteor, which according to Loeb, "appears to be rare both in composition and in speed" and is not ruled out to be "extraterrestrial equipment", using a magnetic sled on the seafloor of the impact region deployed using a long line winch. Siraj noted that "The alternative way to study an interstellar object at close range is by launching a space mission to a future object passing through the Earth's neighborhood" which is thought to be much more expensive than the project's planned budget of $1.6 million. In the study, the astronomers write:
Interestingly, CNEOS 2014-01-08, with a ram pressure of 194 MPa at peak brightness, has the highest material strength of all 273 bolides. The second highest tensile strength is smaller by more than a factor of 2, namely 81 MPa for the 2017-12-15 13:14:37 bolide. The third highest tensile strength, 75 MPa, belongs to the 2017-03-09 04:16:37 bolide, which we identified as a possible interstellar meteor candidate (Siraj & Loeb 2019c). Of course, this result does not imply that the first interstellar meteor was artificially made by a technologicalIn a September 2022 blog post Loeb announced The Galileo Project expedition to search for fragments has been fully funded. In November 2022, a paper was published, claiming the anomalous properties (including its high strength and strongly hyperbolic trajectory) of CNEOS-2014-01-08 are better described as measurement error rather than genuine parameters. If true, successful retrival of any meteoroid fragments is highly unlikely.civilization A civilization (or civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of a state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely, a writing system). C ...and not natural in origin (Loeb 2021).Iron meteorite Iron meteorites, also known as siderites, or ferrous meteorites, are a type of meteorite that consist overwhelmingly of an iron–nickel alloy known as meteoric iron that usually consists of two mineral phases: kamacite and taenite. Most i ...s make about a twentieth of all space rocks arriving on Earth.
See also
*ʻOumuamua
Oumuamua is the first known interstellar object detected passing through the Solar System. Formally designated 1I/2017 U1, it was discovered by Robert Weryk using the Pan-STARRS telescope at Haleakalā Observatory, Hawaii, on 19 October 2 ...
References
External links
Meteoritical Society
Earth Impact Database
Every Recorded Meteorite Impact on Earth
from
Tableau Software
Tableau Software ( ) is an American interactive data visualization software company focused on business intelligence. It was founded in 2003 in Mountain View, California, and is currently headquartered in Seattle, Washington. In 2019 the compa ...
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