Jakarta –
Astronomer was planning a pretty weird idea, ‘fishing’ meteorite in the sea and lift it to the surface of the Earth. This meteorite came from another star system and is known to hit the Pacific Ocean with an energy equivalent to about 121 tons of TNT.
The team, from the University of Harvard, hope to find this interstellar rock fragment known as CNEOS 2014-01-08. As the name implies, this rock from outer space hit Earth on January 8, 2014.
“Finding such a fragment would represent the first contact humans have ever had with material larger than dust from outside the Solar System,” said Amir Siraj, an astrophysicist at the University of Harvard and first author of the new paper published in ArXiv.
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Siraj identified the origin of the interstellar object in a 2019 study with 99.999% confidence, but it wasn’t until May 2022 that it was confirmed to Siraj by the US Space Command. There are no known witnesses to the object hitting Earth.
“It hit the atmosphere about 160 kilometers off the coast of Papua New Guinea in the middle of the night, with a force of about 1% of the energy of the Hiroshima bomb,” Siraj said.
Measuring just 0.5 m, CNEOS 2014-01-08 appears to be the first interstellar object ever discovered in our Solar System. Previously, an oblong object called ‘Oumuamua’ held that title.
Quoted from Live Science, Thursday (11/8/2022) CNEOS 2014-01-08 is thought to come from another star system because it is moving at a speed of 60 kilometers per second relative to the Sun. It was moving too fast to be bound by the Sun’s gravity.
“At Earth’s distance from the Sun, any object moving faster than about 42 kilometers per second is on an infinite hyperbolic runaway path relative to the Sun,” Siraj said.
“This means that CNEOS 2014-01-08 clearly exceeded the local speed limit for the bound object and it didn’t cross paths with other planets along the way, so it must have come from outside the Solar System.”
Giant magnet project
An expedition called Project Galileo worth $1.6 million was deployed to lower the magnet into the sea. The magnet is roughly the size of a king size bed at 1.3 degrees south, 147.6 degrees east, the location of the meteorite’s resting place. It is about 300 km north of Manus Island in the Bismarck Sea in the southwest Pacific Ocean.
CNEOS 2014-01-08 far exceeds the strength of ordinary iron meteorite material, which should make it easier to recover, according to Siraj. The strength of a material refers to how easily something can withstand deformation or being damaged by a load.
“Most meteorites contain enough iron that they will stick to the kind of magnets we plan to use for ocean expeditions. Given the very high strength of the material, it is very likely that the fragments of CNEOS 2014-01-08 are ferromagnetic,” he said.
Departing from Papua New Guinea, the project ship uses a magnetic sled on a longline winch, which will be towed along the 1.7 km seabed for 10 days. The lowered magnet is expected to be able to ‘fish’ for tiny fragments of meteorites, measuring as small as 0.1 mm.
However, it is not known when the astronomer will be able to undertake this expedition. The Galileo project is committed to spending $500,000 and still needs $1.1 million to make it happen. according to Siraj, it’s a fair value compared to space missions.
“An alternative way to study interstellar objects at close range is to launch space missions to future objects that pass through Earth’s environment. But that would be 1,000 times more expensive at around $1 billion,” he concluded.
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(rns/fay)
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