A long flight of a meteorite from outside the solar system ended with a collision with Earth, according to the US Army Space Command.
The meteor is the first non-stellar object to hit Earth, according to researchers. The description of “interstellar objects” refers to meteorites from outside the solar system, and their appearance is rare.
CNN reported that the meteorite known asCNEOS 2014-01-08It fell on the northeast coast of Papua New Guinea on January 8, 2014.
Researcher Amir Siraj found the meteorite for the first time, and revealed that the body was an interstellar meteorite in a study he conducted in 2019, while completing his bachelor’s at Harvard University.
Siraj was studying “Oumuamua”, the first object from outside the solar system, discovered in 2017.
Siraj decided to delve into the NASA Near-Earth Objects database, to discover other objects that he believed were from outside the solar system.
The meteor was moving at a high speed of about 28 miles per second (45 kilometers per second) relative to the Earth, which in turn was moving at about 18.6 miles per second (30 kilometers per second) around the sun.
Because the researchers measured how fast the meteor was moving while they were on a moving planet, 45 kilometers per second wasn’t actually how fast the meteor was, according to CNN.
speed is knownheliocentric speed “It is the speed of a meteor relative to the sun, and it is a more accurate way to determine the orbit of an object.
The planet is moving in one direction around the sun, and according to the calculations, the meteor could have hit the earth head-on, which means opposite the direction in which the planet is moving, or from behind, in the same direction in which the earth is moving.
Since the meteor struck the Earth in the back, i.e. in the same direction in which it revolves around the sun, Siraj’s calculations indicated that the meteor was traveling at a speed of 37.3 miles per second (60 kilometers per second) with respect to the sun.
Then he determined the path of the meteorite and found that it was in an irregular orbit, unlike the closed orbits of other meteorites. He concluded that this meant that instead of orbiting the sun like other meteorites, this meteorite came from outside the solar system.
“Supposedly it was produced by another star, expelled from that star’s system, made its way into our solar system and collided with Earth,” Siraj said.
But the results of Siraj’s study faced obstacles to publishing it in a scientific journal, mainly because “NASA” does not disclose the accuracy of its data.
After years of trying to obtain additional information, he received a response from the US Space Command that confirmed the findings of Siraj, accompanied by Harvard Science Professor Abraham Leop.
Siraj told CNN he has been working with his team since receiving confirmation to resubmit their findings for publication in a scientific journal.
Siraj would also like to assemble a team to try to recover a portion of the meteorite that landed in the Pacific Ocean, but admitted that it would be an unlikely possibility due to the sheer scale of the project.
He assured the American network that if researchers were able to get their hands on the “holy grail of interstellar bodies,” it would be a scientific precedent that might help scientists discover more about the world outside our solar system.