The first ever known deep space meteor to visit Earth from beyond our solar system may have reached us in 2014 - three years BEFORE the interstellar comet 'Oumuamua was first sighted
- The cigar-shaped interstellar comet 'Oumuamua' measured 1,300 feet long
- But smaller rocks visiting from beyond our star system should be more common
- Experts hunted for interstellar meteors in 30 years of US space sensor records
- Harvard scientists found one meteor above Papau New guinea in 2014
- The space rock would have burnt up passing through the Earth's atmosphere
An interstellar space rock may have entered Earth's atmosphere in 2014 — three years before the infamous 'Oumuamua was spotted.
It is thought to have been three feet (one metre) long and was travelling at 134,200 mph when it was spotted above Papau New Guinea.
Astronomers say the meteor was propelled towards the Earth after receiving a speed boost from another planetary system or another star in the Milky Way.
As a meteor, rather than a meteorite, the object would not have reached the ground - instead, it would have disintegrated in our planet's atmosphere.
Avi Loeb, a Harvard scientist who previously claimed 'Oumuamua may have been an alien spacecraft, looked at the data and claims the 2014 meteor came from another star system.
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This meteor would be the second object observed to have visited us from outside of our solar system. The first known body to journey to our neighbourhood for the depths of interstellar space was the cigar-shaped object dubbed 'Oumuamua (pictured), first detected in 2017
'You can imagine that if these meteors were ejected from the habitable zone of a star, they could help transfer life from one planetary system to another,' Professor Loeb said of his latest discovery.
The first known body to journey to our neighbourhood from the depths of interstellar space was the cigar-shaped object dubbed 'Oumuamua, first detected in 2017.
'Oumuamua is a Hawaiian word that translates to 'scout'.
Based on the cigar-shaped comet's speed and trajectory, scientists have determined that 'Oumuamua likely journeyed to us from another star, or perhaps even beyond.
Professor Loeb created controversy back in 2017 when he suggested that the then recently spotted 'Oumuamua could potentially be a non-functioning or active probe sent by an alien civilisation.
'Oumuamua is around 1,300 feet (400 metres) long.
However, Professor Loeb noted that one would expect for visiting interstellar bodies smaller than 'Oumuamua to be much more common.
Furthermore, some of these visitors might even reach the Earth.
'We can use the atmosphere of the Earth as the detector for these meteors, which are too small to otherwise see,' Professor Loeb told Space.com.
Professor Loeb (pictured, in 2016, attending the launch of the Breakthrough Starshot space exploration initiative) teamed up with fellow Harvard University astronomer Amir Siraj to trawl through 30 years of meteor sightings looking for small interstellar visitors
To investigate this possibility, Professor Loeb and fellow Harvard University astronomer Amir Siraj went through 30 years of meteor sightings looking for small interstellar visitors.
They sourced their data from the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies' catalogue, which records meteor events detected by US government sensors.
The team concentrated their investigation on the fastest meteors.
These higher speeds indicate that the object in question is not gravitationally bound to the sun, and could therefore have come from outside the solar system.
The researchers identified one such meteor that met such criteria.
The object was around 3 feet (0.9 metres wide) and was detected at an altitude of 11.6 miles (18.7 kilometres) over Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, South Pacific.
It was observed travelling at around 134,200 miles per hour (216,000 kilometres per hour) and such high speeds — combined with the path it had been taking through space — indicates it may have originated outside of our solar system.
Additionally, the recorded velocity of the meteor suggests that it got a gravitation boost during its journey, the researchers noted.
This boost may have come from the interior of a planetary star system, or perhaps from a star out in the disc of the Milky Way.
Alongside the interstellar meteor they unearthed from monitoring records, the researchers also found two other meteors moving at similarly fast speeds.
However, one had an orbital path that suggested it was gravitationally bound to the sun, and had thus come from within our own solar system.
The researchers were uncertain whether the other, based on the nature of its orbit, was in fact interstellar or local in origin.
It would be useful to study such interstellar meteors as they burn up in the Earth's atmosphere, the researchers said. Professor Loeb proposes that astronomers might set up an alert system to automatically train telescopes on any meteor detected travelling at relevantly high speeds
Based on the assumption that the Earth is visited by three interstellar meteors every 30 years or so, the researchers predict that there must be around a million such meteors in every cubic astronomical unit of the Milky Way.
For reference, one astronomical unit is around 93 million miles (150 million kilometres), which is the average distance between the Earth and the sun
Professor Loeb and Mr Siraj's calculations would suggest that each nearby star must throw out around 60 billion trillion such bodies into interstellar space.
This is equivalent to between around 0.2 to 20 times the mass of the Earth.
It would be useful to study such interstellar meteors as they burn up in the Earth's atmosphere, the researchers added.
Professor Loeb proposes that astronomers might set up an alert system that automatically trains telescopes on any meteor detected travelling at relevantly high speeds.
The telescopes could then analyse the gaseous debris formed as the meteor disintegrated, he added.
'From that, we could infer the compositions of interstellar meteors,' he said.
This could potentially tell us more about the composition of objects outside of our solar system, over which there is currently some uncertainty.
The full findings of the study have been submitted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
A pre-print of the article can be read on the arXiv repository.
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