Mysterious spy satellite assists twists and turns final result
It was this interstellar meteor that hit the earth in 2014
◎Intern reporter Yu Ziyue, Israel reporter Hu Dingkun
【Today's Viewpoint】
According to Israeli media reports, Loeb, an Israeli-born astronomer at Harvard University, and his research partner Siraj found three years ago that the "Manus Island meteor" that hit the Earth in 2014 was an interstellar meteor from outside the solar system. The source and accuracy of its data were questioned by peers at the time.
Until recently, this research was finally confirmed by the US military.
As a result, the "Manus Island Meteor" has become the first interstellar visitor discovered by humans to have "close contact" with the earth, and it is also the first interstellar visitor discovered by humans after the mysterious object "Oumuamua" and the interstellar comet "Borisov". The three exoplanets that visited the solar system were visited many years earlier than the first two.
First acquaintance - "Manus Island Meteor" is full of personality
On January 8, 2014, a meteor burning the equivalent of 110 tons of TNT trailed a brilliant fire across the sky above the coast of Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, and plunged into the depths of the Pacific Ocean.
Recently, Siraj published a long article in the journal "Scientific American" describing the detailed process of his and Loeb's study of the meteor, which he called the "Manus Island Meteor".
In April 2019, Siraj met the "Manus Island Meteor" in NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Research (CNEOS) database, numbered "CNEOS 2014-01-08".
The database shares data on more than 900 meteors discovered by official U.S. probes from 1988 to the present.
At the time, Siraj was still an undergraduate at Harvard, and Loeb served as his academic advisor.
At that time, the search for interstellar objects led by "Oumuamua" had not yet faded, and the relevant data in CNEOS had great potential for mining.
"Meteors of similar size are not uncommon in Earth's sky. Dozens of them appear every year. But what was unusual about this meteor was that it met Earth at a very high speed and in an unusual direction, suggesting that it Probably from interstellar space." Siraj said that within days, he identified "Manus Island Meteor" as a potential candidate for interstellar meteors.
Research - Interstellar meteor identity is about to come out
According to the law of gravity, celestial bodies with a relative speed of more than 42 kilometers per second in the vicinity of the earth's orbit have exceeded the capture ability of the sun, and may also come from outside the solar system.
According to the data provided by CNEOS, Siraj calculated that the speed of the "Manus Island Meteor" was close to 60 kilometers per second, which was much faster than other meteors. on the earth.
If the data are correct, this would be the first interstellar meteor ever discovered to hit Earth.
The previously discovered "Oumuamua" and "Borisov" traveled through the solar system in 2017 and 2019 respectively, leaving only a glimpse.
In contrast, the "Manus Island Meteor", which was thrown into the arms of the earth in 2014, is obviously more "closer" to humans.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
In order to make the research results more convincing, Loeb and Siraj tried to look for evidence to support this conclusion from different angles.
The duo used different meteor data from CNEOS and other literature to inversely estimate the measurement error of the associated meteor orbit data.
After a series of tedious and arduous verification work, they came to the same conclusion: Even taking into account a certain amount of error, the "Manus Island meteor" clearly came from interstellar space.
Soon, the duo drafted a paper reporting the findings for peer-reviewed publication.
Twists and turns - the source of the paper's rejected data is questioned
Unfortunately, Loeb and Siraj's paper was rejected.
The reason given by the reviewer is that the accuracy of the data cannot be judged.
Let's talk about CNEOS, which is the product of the cooperation between the US military and NASA. The observation data of various meteors come from the US military's highly classified spy satellites, which are mainly used to detect ballistic missiles launched by other countries.
Therefore, for reasons of confidentiality and other reasons, it does not publish the measurement error range of meteor speed, position and other data.
Although Loeb et al. specifically studied the effect of error, their efforts were not recognized by the reviewers.
Since then, Loeb and Siraj found two Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists with advanced security clearances, and through one of them contacted an anonymous analyst who could Access to the relevant data of the US military satellite, and confirmed that the measurement error of the "Manus Island Meteor" does not exceed 10%.
According to this margin of error, there is a 99.999% chance that the Manus Island meteor came from outside the solar system.
But the paper was rejected again by the reviewers, who believed that the added corroboration was only a private communication with an anonymous U.S. government employee, not an official statement from the U.S. government.
"After several attempts to satisfy the journal reviewers, we regrettably turned to other studies that failed to confirm the true identity of the meteor," Siraj said.
The final chapter - the U.S. military speaks out to justify its name
The turnaround came a year later.
Peter Worden, the president of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, who has served at NASA and the U.S. military, approached Siraj and introduced Matt Daniels, who was working in the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the time.
Daniels read a preprint of the study and offered to help them get an official statement from the U.S. military.
After another year of multiple layers of the government bureaucracy, between March and April 2022, Daniels was awarded U.S. Space Force Deputy Commander Lt. Gen. John Shaw and U.S. Space Operations Command Chief Scientist Joel Moser. The official document of Dr. confirmed the reliability of the relevant measurement data, thus effectively proving the interstellar origin of the "Manus Island Meteor".
Three years after the initial discovery by Loeb and Siraj, the first celestial object and the first known interstellar meteor from outside the solar system that have been observed so far have been officially confirmed, and this twists and turns of the identity battle has finally ended The curtain, "Manus Island Meteor" also ushered in a real and beautiful final chapter.
At present, Siraj and others are studying whether it is possible to retrieve debris from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. At that time, that will be a new story.