Did interstellar debris fall to the sea floor? Claim meets sea of doubt

In 2014, a rock from space blazed through the atmosphere and exploded off the coast of Papua New Guinea with such ferociousness that some researchers believe the object came from beyond the Solar System. Now, a team of researchers says it has recovered remnants of the meteor from the floor of the Pacific Ocean and claims that a preliminary analysis of their unusual composition points to an origin around another star. Only in the past few years have astronomers realized that interstellar objects sometimes whizz through the Solar System and might even hit Earth. Finding a lump of rock from another planetary system would be an unbelievable stroke of scientific fortune, one that could shed light on the formation of alien planets and stars. Avi Loeb, the controversial theoretical physicist at Harvard University who led the team, believes that’s what his high-risk ocean mission has achieved. “If you don’t allow for surprises, you won’t learn something new,” he says. On 29 August, the team released a preprint describing the claims, which it has submitted to the journal Ocean Science . But others are dismissive of the preprint, which has not been peer reviewed. Although the geochemical analysis of the debris is solid, the conclusions that Loeb and his colleagues hang on them are “nonsense,” says Martin Schiller, a cosmochemist at the University of Copenhagen. “I’m surprised anyone would take it seriously.” Larry Nittler, a cos...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research