If Avi Loeb succeeds, he could go from maverick to science star. After “Oumuamua,” the first known comet from outside our own solar system, flew past Earth in 2017, the Harvard astronomer set out to find more of these rare objects. And he found what he was looking for in a US government database.
On January 9, 2014, their satellites recorded the entry of an extremely fast object into the Earth’s atmosphere near Papua New Guinea: “IM1” hit the Earth at 162,000 kilometers per hour, as the recordings showed. US Space Command later confirmed that the object came from interstellar space. But that wasn’t the only thing that fascinated Loeb about IM1.
The meteor’s recorded light curve indicated that the object was extremely hard. “IM1” only disintegrated in Earth’s lower atmosphere. Exactly what material the meteor is made of is unclear; but it must have been harder than steel, or it would have burned sooner. The situation was similar to the meteor observed in 2017, dubbed “IM2”, alongside “Oumuamua” and “IM1”, the third known interstellar object in our solar system. However, Avi Loeb’s statement about the origin of the material is also the reason why it is controversial in science.
“It is possible that ‘IM1’ and ‘IM2’ are difficult because they are artificial in origin and resemble our own interstellar probes, but were launched a billion years ago by a distant technological civilization,” Loeb wrote on his blog earlier this year. . But his belief in the artificial origin of “IM1” and “IM2” also apparently helped the researcher collect enough donations for an expedition in the Pacific Ocean.
Since June 14, Avi Loeb and a team have been searching a marine area off the coast of Papua New Guinea to find the remains of “IM1”. In comparison: the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack is child’s play: with magnets and sieves in a device on the stern of their ship, the researchers search the seabed at a depth of 1.7 kilometers for small metal balls, often containing only fractions of one millimeter in size. And yet the team wants to have already achieved a first success.
On June 21, the team reported on their blog about a bead with an unusual combination of iron, magnesium and titanium, which speaks neither for a man-made object nor for one from our solar system. Other researchers, however, were sceptical: “Tiny metal balls are extremely common on Earth,” said NASA expert Marc Fries of the BBC. “They come from car exhaust, vehicle brakes, volcanoes or are created during welding. Some sources may not even have been identified.”
But Avi Loeb is used to sportingly heed the skepticism of his fellow scientists. To this day, he believes that “Oumuamua” was an alien mothership. He is also combative in the search for “IM1” and proof of its artificial origin: “I admit that the chances of success are slim,” he writes on his blog. “Still, I think it’s worth the risk.”
(t-online, mk)
Source: Blick
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