Nasa alien news 2014
The asteroid is up to one-quarter mile (400 meters) long and highly-elongated - perhaps 10 times as long as it is wide. However, it displays none of the classic behavior expected of comets, such as a dusty, water-ice particle tail. Initially, it was thought the object could be a comet. It was hailed as the first interstellar object seen in the solar system, but it baffled astronomers. It is named after the Hawaiian term for 'scout' or 'messenger' and passed the Earth at about 85 times the distance to the moon. It was first spotted by a telescope in Hawaii on October 19, and was observed 34 separate times in the following week.
The third-known interstellar object to be discovered, a comet called 2I/Borisov, was discovered by Crimean amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov with a telescope in August 2019 when it passed by the sun.ĢI/Borisov is one of the most 'pristine comets' ever observed, scientists announced last year, meaning it has not been altered or degraded by heat and radiation from stars like our sun.Ī cigar-shaped object named 'Oumuamua sailed past Earth at 97,200mph (156,428km/h) in October 2017. Originally classified as a comet, Oumuamua was later reclassified as an asteroid as it lacked a coma – a cloud of gases that surrounds the nucleus of a comet. The finding does of course mean that Oumuamua has been relegated to be the second interstellar object to be detected, in October 2017. It will then assist hopefully the astronomical community and allow research into the implications of the 2014 meteor impact. Siraj's hopes his study, which was submitted The Astrophysical Journal Letters, will now soon be peer-reviewed and published. Until now, it was known as the first-known interstellar object to visit our solar systemĪ high speed is an indicator of an object that originates from outside our solar system because, if it were bound by an orbit around our sun it would be much slower.įor comparison, Earth orbits the sun at around 66,000 miles per hour. This artist's impression shows Oumuamua, discovered in 2017. Its high speed implies 'a possible origin from the deep interior of a planetary system or a star in the thick disk of the Milky Way galaxy', Siraj wrote in his 2019 paper. 'As a result, no one had a reason to think that there could be meteors that were from outside of the solar system.' 'It wasn't that we had to dig to find this database – it was more that there hadn't been an interstellar object until 2017. 'It was really fast, and so I was like "Oh my God, this could be an interstellar meteor",' Siraj told Vice. 'It was hiding in plain sight.
Siraj said he was inspired to investigate the meteor and its impact after noticing its usually high speed – over 100,000 miles per hour – compared to the other entries in the database. Information about the meteor is scarce, although its details – including its coordinates above Manus Island – are logged in NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) fireball database. 'It would be a big undertaking, but we're going to look at it in extreme depth because the possibility of getting the first piece of interstellar material is exciting enough to check this very thoroughly and talk to all the world experts on ocean expeditions to recover meteorites.' The memo, dated March 1 and shared on Twitter this month, signs off findings from US Space Command chief scientist Dr Joel Mozer 'One thing that I'm going to be checking – and I'm already talking to people about – is whether it is possible to search the ocean floor off the coast of Papua New Guinea and see if we can get any fragments.' 'I get a kick out of just thinking about the fact that we have interstellar material that was delivered to Earth, and we know where it is,' he said. The study, which still hasn't been peer reviewed, reported the meteor as originating from interstellar space with '99.999 per cent confidence'.Īccording to the authors, the study has been awaiting peer review for years so the claim could be confirmed, but it's faced roadblocks from the US government, which was withholding key information from a publicly-available NASA database.Īmir Siraj, one of the study authors, told Vice that he wants to track down fragments from the object that may be at the bottom of the ocean. It was back in 2019 that Harvard University researchers posted a study on the preprint server arXiv, acknowledging the meteor's existence and saying it had come from outside our solar system. 'Dr Mozer confirmed that the velocity estimate reported to NASA is sufficiently accurate to indicate an interstellar trajectory.'
Shaw, deputy commander of the US Space Command. Dr Mozer 'reviewed analysis of additional data available to the Department of Defense related to this finding,' reads the memo, which is signed by Lt.