The United States confirmed the existence of the first interstellar object on Earth

When on January 8, 2014, a small rock burst over the skies of the islands of Papua New Guinea in the Pacific Ocean after speeding into the earth's atmosphere, the event did not attract the attention of astronomers much.

But some time later, Amir Siraj and Avi Loeb, astronomers from Harvard University, rescued the records of that atmospheric impact and found that this meteorite had reached Earth at an extraordinary speed: 210,000 km/h, well above that typical of the rocks originating from our Solar system. In addition, the trajectory of its orbit clearly stated that the rock 'was not from here', but had formed very far away, in some remote planetary system of a distant star.

That space rock was actually the first known object from another star system, as confirmed today by the United States Space Command (USSC) in a newly published, previously classified memorandum. The confirmation supports the discovery of the first interstellar meteorite that was initially pointed out by Harvard theoretical astrophysicist Amir Siraj and his mentor Avi Loeb in a study published on the arXiv prepress server in 2019.

In the 2019 study, the researchers argued that the meteorite's velocity — barely 0.45 meters in diameter, and that it traveled through space at over 210,000 km/h — along with the trajectory of its orbit, demonstrated with 99 percent certainty that the object had originated far beyond our solar system, possibly “from the deep interior of a planetary system or a star in the thick disk of the Milky Way,” the authors wrote. Despite their almost certainty, the pair of scientists had serious difficulties in having their study reviewed by colleagues due to the bureaucracy surrounding the object of study.

The team's work, which was never published before in a scientific journal, was held back by some of the data needed to verify its calculations, which were considered classified by the US Government.

USSC: “Effectively an interstellar object”

In a memo dated March 1 and shared on Twitter on April 6, Lieutenant General John E. Shaw, deputy commander of the USSC, wrote that the 2019 fireball analysis was “accurate enough to confirm an interstellar trajectory.”

Now, USSC scientists have officially confirmed their findings. At the Space Foundation's annual Space Symposium, U.S. Space Command Deputy Commander John Shaw announced that “a previously detected interstellar object was effectively an interstellar object” in the now declassified memorandum. This confirmation retroactively makes the 2014 meteor the first interstellar object detected in our solar system, the note added.

The discovery of the meteor comes after the recent detection of two other interstellar objects in our solar system, known as' Oumuamua — a now famous cigar-shaped object that also moves too fast to have originated in our solar system — and the Borisov comet, which were much larger and did not come into close contact with Earth.

Even Avi Loeb, an astrophysicist at Harvard University, went even further, and launched a controversial hypothesis: Oumuamua were the remains of an extraterrestrial spacecraft. As Oumuamua is now out of reach of the most powerful telescopes, it can no longer be viewed. But as the debate about its origin is still going on, one team has outlined an ambitious plan to send a probe to reach the mysterious space object as it inexorably moves further and further away from Earth.

The mission could be launched in early 2028 and reach Oumuamua, depending on its speed and direction of travel when it left our Solar System, between 2050-2054, and thus end once and for all the mystery of its origin.

Although the object detected in Papua New Guinea does not have the glamour of Oumuamua, its discovery precedes it, making it the first interstellar object ever detected in our Solar System, according to the US government report.

Search for interstellar remains

Siraj stated that he still intends to publish the original study, so that the scientific community can pick up where he and his colleagues left off. Since the meteorite ignited over the South Pacific Ocean, it is possible that fragments of the object land in the water and have since nested on the seabed, he added. While locating these interstellar remains could be an almost impossible task, Siraj said he is already consulting with experts on the possibility of mounting an expedition to recover them.

“I'm excited just to think about the fact that we have interstellar material that came to Earth, and we know where it is,” said Siraj, who is director of interstellar object studies at Harvard's Galileo Project. “One thing I'm going to check — and I'm already talking to people — is whether it's possible to search the ocean floor off the coast of Papua New Guinea and see if we can get any fragments,” he added.

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