Astronomers confirmed that a suspicious space rock that hit Earth in 2014 came from another star system, three years before the famous interstellar visitor ‘Oumuamua.
Researchers I found the meteorite in the catalog by NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) in 2019. However, at the time, some data on the rock’s trajectory was kept secret by the United States Department of Defense (DoD), collected by sensors.
But in March of this year, the Department of Defense released a statement confirming the measurements, allowing scientists to complete their calculations about the mysterious rock’s origin.
Small width 3 feet (0.9 meters)asteroidwho entered The earth’s atmosphere On January 8, 2014, the speed reached 134,200 mph (216,000 km / h). It has also followed a strange path, indicating that it may have come from outside solar system. By modeling the trajectories of rocks in the past and evaluating their gravitational interactions with the planets of the solar system, the authors of the new paper confirmed that the small asteroid was indeed a newcomer to the world. Sunangle Milky Way galaxy.
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The confirmation makes the rock, named CNEOS 2014-01-08, the first known visitor in interstellar space, predating the famous 650-foot (200-meter) wide asteroid.أو Oumuamua which passed Earth in 2017. Just a year later, astronomers discovered the second stellar body, which is 1,650 feet (0.5 km) wide. Comet Borisov. The short period between these discoveries has led astronomers to believe that smaller interstellar rocks, no more than a few feet or tens of feet wide, must be more common in the Solar System and also along regular paths with our planet.
That’s why the authors of the new research paper, famed Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb and colleague Amir Siraj, decided to search the CNEOS catalog. In addition to CNEOS 2014-01-08, they found another promising one meteor, so the necessary data is still confidential. This space rock sculpted the Earth’s atmosphere in March 2017.
Researchers believe interstellar space rocks could hit Earth’s atmosphere once every decade. In the paper, the researchers suggest that analyzing these meteorites could provide new insights into their chemistry star systems.
“By extrapolating the trajectory of each meteor over time and analyzing the relative abundances of the chemical isotopes of each meteor, it is possible to match the meteors to their parent stars and reveal information about the formation of the planetary system,” the authors said. sheet (Opens in a new tab). “[Some chemical] The elements can be detected in the atmosphere of stars, so their abundance in the spectra of meteorites could serve as important connections with the parent stars. “
Because most meteorites burn in the atmosphere before they reach the surface of the Earth, and because the recovery of those meteorites takes a long time. Technically difficultThe researchers propose to create a global network of cameras capable of performing spectroscopic measurements, analyzing the light-absorbing fingerprints of incoming space rocks that could reveal their chemical composition.
CNEOS 2014-01-08 exploded on the ocean near Papua New Guinea, Siraj told Space.com in an email, and scientists believe some pieces of rock may have survived the journey through Earth’s atmosphere and having fallen into the sea. Siraj and Loeb plan an expedition to try and recover some fragments next year.
The researchers also suggest that such a high frequency of interstellar visitors over the course of Earth’s history could mean that the seeds of life that have sprouted on our planet over the past 3.5 billion years may have come from another star system.
I study (Opens in a new tab) It was published on November 2 in The Astrophysical Journal.
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