Confirmed! Scientists Claim First Known Interstellar Visitor Arrived on Earth in 2014 – Enseñame de Ciencia

The earliest confirmed interstellar object came in 2014, scientists say. (Artist’s rendering of ‘Oumuamua / Credit: Ron Miller.)

Astronomers have confirmed that a space rock that hit Earth in 2014 is the first interstellar object to visit us, even before the famous ‘Oumuamua. The small meteor would have arrived here on January 8, 2014, which positions it as the first on the list for 3 years.

Originally, the earliest confirmed interstellar object was ‘Oumuamua, discovered in the solar system by Pan-STARRS in 2017. A team of scientists explored the CNEOS bolide event catalog, identifying a meteor named CNEOS 2014- 01-08 detected on January 8, 2014 at 17:05:34 UTC as coming from an unbound hyperbolic orbit.

Subsequently, the US Department of Defense published an official letter stating that “the velocity estimate reported to NASA is accurate enough to indicate an interstellar trajectory.” This discovery had been detailed in the 2019 study, which ensured 99% certainty that the object had originated far beyond our solar system, but it was never published in a peer-reviewed journal.

A recent study, published on November 2 in the Astrophysical Journal, officially confirms that the meteor that streaked through the skies in 2014 is definitely the first known interstellar object so far. He entered our neighborhood and was identified 3 years before ‘Oumuamua.

According to estimates, CNEOS 2014-01-08 comes from another system due to the great speed at which it was traveling, 60 kilometers per second, something very fast for the gravity of our Sun. When an object moves at a speed that exceeds 42 kilometers per second, then it is in hyperbolic escape. As the speed of the meteorite is known to exceed this figure, it is considered to come from a place outside our solar system.

“By extrapolating the trajectory of each meteor back in time and analyzing the relative abundances of each meteor’s chemical isotopes, meteors can be related to their parent stars and reveal insights into the formation of planetary systems,” the authors wrote in the article. «[Algunos elementos químicos] they can be detected in the atmospheres of stars, so their abundances in meteor spectra may serve as important links to parent stars.”

This is a meteorite that might tell us a lot regarding the solar system and what lies beyond. The problem is that the object hit the ocean, making it almost impossible to study. Scientists believe that all is not lost, and in fact, they have already launched a recovery plan to carry out a detailed analysis of it.

In a previous Teach Me regarding Science article We mentioned that a team from Harvard University led by Amir Siraj and Abraham Loeb from the Galileo project, the name given to this underwater mission which aims to fish for this meteorite, aims to find fragments of CNEOS 2014-01-08, rock that owes its name to the date on which it crashed to earth on January 8, 2014 near the coast of Papua New Guinea, in the Pacific Ocean. The team mentioned that if this mission is successful then it would represent the first time that humans have had direct contact with an object larger than interstellar dust. You can read the full article regarding it here.

The finding is detailed in an article published in the journal Astrophysical Journal.

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