An interstellar object exploded over Earth in 2014, declassified government data reveal

 

A fireball that flared over Earth in 2014 was actually a rock from another star system (Image credit: Vadim Sadovski/Shutterstock)

For three years, experts were unable to validate their discovery due to classified data.

 

According to a recent statement provided by the US Space Command, a fireball that shot across the skies over Papua New Guinea in 2014 was actually a fast-moving object from another star system (USSC).

 

According to a 2019 study of the object published in the preprint database arXiv, the object, a small meteorite measuring just 1.5 feet (0.45 metre) across, slammed into Earth's atmosphere on Jan. 8, 2014, after travelling through space at more than 130,000 mph (210,000 km/h) — a speed far exceeding the average velocity of meteors orbiting within the solar system.

 

The authors of the 2019 study said that the speed of the little meteor, together with the route of its orbit, demonstrated with 99 percent certainty that it came from beyond our solar system, maybe "from the deep interior of a planetary system or a star in the thick disc of the Milky Way galaxy." According to Vice, the team's article was never peer-reviewed or published in a scientific publication, despite its near confidence, since some of the data needed to verify their calculations was classified by the US government.

 

The findings of the team have now been officially confirmed by USSC scientists. Lt. Gen. John E. Shaw, deputy head of the USSC, wrote in a memo dated March 1 and released on Twitter on April 6 that the 2019 examination of the fireball was "sufficiently accurate to affirm an interstellar trajectory."

 

According to the memo, this confirmation makes the 2014 meteor the first interstellar object ever spotted in our solar system. According to the USSC memo, the item was discovered three years before 'Oumuamua,' a now-famous cigar-shaped object that is also flying far too fast to have originated in our solar system. (Unlike the meteor in 2014, 'Oumuamua was discovered far from Earth and is already hurtling out of the solar system, according to NASA.)

 

According to Vice, Amir Siraj, a theoretical astrophysicist at Harvard University and the principal author of the 2019 publication, he still plans to publish the original study so that the scientific community can continue where he and his colleagues left off. It's likely that bits of the meteorite landed in the ocean and have subsequently settled on the seafloor because it exploded over the South Pacific Ocean, he continued.

 

Despite the fact that finding these shards of cosmic trash may be near-impossible, Siraj said he is already engaging experts about the prospect of conducting an expedition to recover them.

 

"The prospect of recovering the first piece of interstellar material excites me enough to double-check everything and consult with all the world experts on ocean missions to recover meteorites," Siraj told Vice.

 

Read more about the 2014 meteor at Vice.com.