Speaker
Benjamin Fernando
(Johns Hopkins University)
Description
It was recently reported by Siraj & Loeb (2023) that an ‘interstellar meteor’, potentially part of an alien spaceship, burnt up over the Pacific Ocean in 2014. These authors attempted to use seismic data produced by the bolide to pin-point a re-entry location, from which they claimed to recover pieces of the object from the seafloor. We will show, using both seismic data and IMS infrasound data, that this identification is mistaken. Instead, we associate the seismic signal with a passing vehicle. Using data from three IMS stations, we show that the meteor’s actual re-entry (regardless of whether it was interstellar or not) likely took place several hundred kilometres away, and hence the recovered material is likely unrelated to it.
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Authors
Benjamin Fernando
(Johns Hopkins University)
Mr
Pierrick Mialle
(CTBTO Preparatory Commission)
Göran Ekström
(Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University)
Constantinos Charalambous
(Imperial College London)
Steve Desch
(Arizona State University)
Alan Jackson
(Towson University)
Eleanor Sansom
(Curtin University)
Sara Russell
(Natural History Museum)
Giles Miller
