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It was late 2017 when the world of astronomy buzzed for what seemed to be the first interstellar visitor ever observed by humans. It was a long, cigar-shaped object that its discoverers called Oumuamua. He turned so quickly around our Sun and returned to interstellar space so quickly that scientists had to scramble to study it.
After reviewing recordings of meteor strikes on Earth in previous years, Harvard researchers believe they have discovered evidence of the first ever interstellar meteor to hit the Earth. If this is true, the rock arrived on our planet well before Oumuamua.
As Space.com Harvard scientists Avi Loeb and Amir Siraj studied data from CNEOS, the Center for Near-Earth Objects Studies, which track objects approaching the Earth as well as rocks from space. collapse.
They closely examined the speed at which objects were observed moving as well as the angle at which they approached the Earth. One particular meteor, which was sighted in early 2014 on Papua New Guinea, a South Pacific nation, immediately caught their attention.
The rock was moving at a vertiginous speed of over 200,000 km / h and its approach angle suggests that it could come from outside our solar system.
The discovery of an object that originated in another planetary system is a big problem, and the fact that it crashed here on Earth is even more dramatic. Loeb even suggests that such events may be responsible for the dispersion of life around the Universe.
"You can imagine that if these meteors were ejected from the habitable area of a star, they could help transfer life from one planetary system to another," Loeb said. Space.com.
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