There’s little question a particularly shiny fireball careened by means of the ambiance north of Papua New Guinea on January 8, 2014. It’s additionally true that divers recovered supplies on the backside of the ocean final 12 months close to the place many specialists believed the article landed—and that distinguished Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb theorized a few of these metallic spherules have been probably of “extraterrestrial technological” origin. However as to the ground vibrations recorded at a seismic station on Manus Island throughout the identical atmospheric occasion? The reason is probably going way more mundane.
“[T]hey have all of the traits we’d count on from a truck and not one of the traits we’d count on from a meteor,” Johns Hopkins planetary seismologist Benjamin Fernando said on Thursday.
Fernando and his colleagues will current their findings on March 12 throughout the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas.
Though Fernando’s staff concedes it’s tough to show what one thing isn’t by means of sign information, it’s fairly simple to spotlight the traits it could share with present, explainable seismic information.
“The sign modified instructions over time, precisely matching a street that runs previous the seismometer,” stated Fernando.
[Related: How scientists decide if they’ve actually found signals of alien life.]
To additional bolster the way more on a regular basis rationalization, researchers additionally utilized information collected throughout the 2014 occasion by amenities in Australia and Palau initially constructed to measure nuclear take a look at sound waves. After factoring in these recordings, Fernando’s staff revised the earlier location estimations for a extra precise spot of the atmospheric incidence—an space 100 miles away from the unique area.
“The fireball location was really very far-off from the place the oceanographic expedition went to retrieve these meteor fragments,” Fernando stated of the 2023 restoration journey. “Not solely did they use the unsuitable sign, they have been wanting within the unsuitable place.”
The staff additionally doesn’t mince phrases of their new paper, “Probably Not Aliens: Seismic Data Analysis from the 2014 ‘Interstellar Meteor.’” Of the alien concept, the researchers “think about it to be at finest extremely overstated and at worst solely faulty.” And of the fabric recovered final 12 months, “poor localisation implies that any materials recovered is much much less prone to be from the meteor, not to mention of interstellar and even extraterrestrial origin.”
[Related: How lightning on exoplanets could make it harder to find alien life.]
Given NASA’s estimate that round 50 tons of meteoritic material bombards Earth day by day, Fernando’s staff says it’s positively potential a few of these fragments retrieved from the ocean ground might certainly be from another meteorite. Regardless, they “strongly suspect that it wasn’t aliens.”
Disappointing? Maybe. However there’ll in all probability be loads of new UAP sightings to parse sooner or later—particularly if folks take up the federal government’s provide to submit their very own inexplicable occasions.
For extra detailed debunking, tune right into a livestream of subsequent week’s findings here.
