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An interstellar meteor hit Earth for the first time in 2014 off the coast of Papua New Guinea, Indonesia’s eastern neighbor. Foto/news.com.au
The celestial object, initially reported as a fiery ball of fire, was seen over the southwest Pacific Ocean in Papua New Guinea in 2014. Secret United States Space Command (USSC) documents confirmed it was an interstellar meteor.
In fact, it was the first interstellar meteor detected in our solar system.
The sky rock is just 1.5 feet (less than half a meter) wide and is hurtling toward Earth at an astonishing speed of 209,214 km per hour.
Such speeds are unheard of for a meteor in our solar system.
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It is thought that some debris from it may have landed in the South Pacific Ocean as well.
Harvard space experts Amir Siraj and Avi Loeb made the call years ago—but their research got stuck in the bureaucracy as officials investigated.
They said in 2019 that it may have come from the interior of a planetary or star system in the thick disk of the Milky Way galaxy.
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