BOSTON – Ever since he first learned about the strange meteor falling to Earth, astrophysicist Avi Loeb has been determined to discover whether it was indeed an extraterrestrial artifact that had crashed into the Pacific Ocean.
Now, the professor and theoretical astrophysicist at Harvard University says he and a team of scientists are one step closer to making that determination after they retrieved suspected remnants of the meteor in June off the coast of Papua New Guinea. On Tuesday, Loeb said in a media release that early analysis suggests that those small metallic objects actually are interstellar in origin.
The findings may not yet answer the question of whether the metallic spheres are artificial or natural in origin, but Loeb insists that the team is now confident that what they found is unmatched to any existing alloys in our solar system.
“This is a historic discovery because it represents the first time that humans put their hand on materials from a large object that arrived to Earth from outside the solar system,” Loeb wrote Tuesday on Medium, where he has been documenting the expedition and resulting studies. “The success of the expedition illustrates the value of taking risks in science despite all odds as an opportunity for discovering new knowledge.”
Led by Loeb, the team of scientists and researchers hired EYOS Expeditions and embarked in June aboard a boat called the Silver Star bound for Papa New Guinea.
It was north of the country where for two weeks, the crew, financed with $1.5 million from entrepreneur Charles Hoskinson, sought to retrieve any remnants they could find of an unusual meteorite they named IM1 that had crashed into Earth’s atmosphere in 2014.
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