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Raging meteorite (illustration)

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The start of the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston promises controversy.

This Tuesday, researchers led by seismologist Benjamin Fernando from Johns Hopkins University were supposed to present results that refute seemingly spectacular findings by astrophysicist Avi Loeb from Harvard University.

Title of the lecture: “Probably not aliens”.

Loeb has made a name for himself by searching for traces of extraterrestrial life - and in doing so he continues to provoke doubters (read an interview with Loeb here).

Last year he presented material recovered from the seabed near Papua New Guinea that is said to come from an unusually fast meteorite impact in January 2014 - presumably with an origin outside the solar system.

He also based his theory on seismic measurements.

They are said to have recorded the sound waves of the impact.

Signal matches the country road

Fernando and colleagues are confident of a much more earthly explanation.

The rash was “in reality only caused by a truck,” according to a press release about their study, which was published on a preprint server and has not yet been scientifically reviewed.

In it, data used by Loeb from an earthquake monitoring station on the island of Manus are analyzed.

"The signal changed direction over time, which exactly matches the path of a country road near the seismometer," explained Fernando.

The study identified a second signal, but it could not be statistically separated from general background noise.

A meteorite actually hit the region in 2014, but according to data from other measuring stations, it was probably around 150 kilometers from where Loeb's expedition was searching.

“Not only did they follow the wrong signal, they also looked in the wrong place,” says Benjamin Fernando.

The material brought from the Pacific probably came from ordinary meteorites or other sources - "but we strongly suspect not from aliens."

Loeb himself already countered this with a blog entry on the “Medium” platform: His critics ignored the fact that he was also relying on data from the US Department of Defense’s Space Command.

Astronomers who question this authority “should have sleepless nights.”

Because that would suggest that an authority endowed with billions in taxes would only offer pseudo-security.

Loeb did not respond to the reference to truck noise.

To do this, he announced the next expedition to find larger parts of the meteorite.

ahhh