- In 2014, an interstellar meteor struck Earth in the Pacific Ocean near Papua New Guinea.
- Seismic recordings made at the time and linked to the interstellar meteor led some scientists to search the ocean in a specific spot for extraterrestrial material.
- But a new study shows the seismic recordings were not related to the interstellar meteor but instead were from a passing truck.
Roberto Molar Candanosa of Johns Hopkins University wrote this original story on March 7, 2024. Edits by EarthSky.
Interstellar signal was a rumbling truck
Sound waves thought to be an interstellar signal from a 2014 meteor fireball north of Papua New Guinea were almost certainly vibrations from a truck rumbling along a nearby road. That’s according to new research led by Johns Hopkins University. The findings raise doubts that materials pulled last year from the ocean are alien materials from that meteor, as was widely reported.
Benjamin Fernando, a planetary seismologist at Johns Hopkins who led the research, said:
The signal changed directions over time, exactly matching a road that runs past the seismometer. It’s really difficult to take a signal and confirm it is not from something. But what we can do is show that there are lots of signals like this, and show they have all the characteristics we’d expect from a truck and none of the characteristics we’d expect from a meteor.
The team presented its findings about the supposed interstellar signal on March 12, 2024, at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston. The full session can be found here.
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The 2014 interstellar visitor
After a meteor entered Earth’s atmosphere over the Western Pacific in January 2014, some scientists linked the event to ground vibrations recorded at a seismic station in Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. In fact, in 2023, Avi Loeb and team recovered materials at the bottom of the ocean near where they thought meteor fragments had fallen. Those researchers identified the fragments as “extraterrestrial technological” in origin.
But, according to Fernando, that supposition relies on misinterpreted data. And the meteor, in fact, actually entered the atmosphere somewhere else. Fernando’s team did not find evidence of seismic waves from the meteor. Fernando said:
The fireball location was very far away from where the oceanographic expedition went to retrieve these meteor fragments. Not only did they use the wrong signal, they were looking in the wrong place.
More likely location for the meteor
Using data from stations in Australia and Palau designed to detect sound waves from nuclear testing, Fernando’s team identified a more likely location for the meteor. That location is more than 100 miles from the area initially investigated. In addition, they concluded the materials recovered from the ocean bottom were tiny, ordinary meteorites, or particles produced from other meteorites hitting Earth’s surface mixed with terrestrial contamination. Fernando added:
Whatever was found on the sea floor is totally unrelated to this meteor, regardless of whether it was a natural space rock or a piece of alien spacecraft … even though we strongly suspect that it wasn’t aliens.
Bottom line: A new analysis of seismic waves recorded around the time of the 2014 interstellar meteor that hit Earth shows it was not an alien signal but a nearby truck and completely unrelated to the meteor.
Source: Probably Not Aliens: Seismic Data Analysis from the 2014 ‘Interstellar Meteor’
Via Johns Hopkins University