"Interstellar Alien Tech Meteor" Signal Was Actually Just... Vibrations Of Local Truck
Rigorous analysis should come before the boldest claims.
author
DR. ALFREDO CARPINETI
Senior Staff Writer & Space Correspondent
Edited by Katy Evans
A Meteor glowing as it enters the Earth's atmosphere
Several claims about a fabled interstellar meteor have been brought into question.
Image Credit: solarseven/Shutterstock.com
Contentious claims that an interstellar meteor possibly containing alien technology hit Earth a decade ago is on even shakier ground – quite literally. Last year, pieces of the meteor were collected from the ocean off Papua New Guinea, though later analysis brought into question the "alien tech" nature of the spherules recovered. Now, it appears the soundwaves the team claimed were linked to the fireball were actually from the shaking of a nearby truck driving past.
What we do know is that a meteor entered the atmosphere on January 8, 2014 – burning brightly as it did so. Using a recording from a seismometer on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea that they linked to the meteor, controversial and prolific Harvard professor Avi Loeb and his team calculated that the speed of the object was consistent with an interstellar object. If confirmed, it would be only the third interstellar visitor to the Solar System known, and the first to hit Earth. The recording also led them to propose a location in the ocean where the debris might have landed and sunk.
In 2022, US military officials confirmed the interstellar object and the meteor's official name CNEOS 2014-01-08 came to be used interchangeably with Interstellar Meteor 1. However subsequent analysis suggests that the speed of the object was substantially overestimated, and may not be of interstellar origin after all.
https://www.iflscience.com/interstellar-alien-tech-meteor-signal-was-actually-just-vibrations-of-local-truck-73299
