A space researcher, Avi Loeb, has recovered 50 small metal balls from the Pacific Ocean. Photos/Indy100
This isn’t the first time Loeb has speculated that our solar system has been visited by extraterrestrial technology. Five years ago, he and fellow Harvard researcher Shmuel Bialy proposed that the strange interstellar object ‘Oumuamua, which passed through our solar system in late 2017, was an autonomous alien probe similar to a light sail.
Now, backed by funding from crypto multi-billionaire Charles Hoskinson, Loeb is leading an expedition across the Pacific Ocean to retrieve the object he has dubbed Interstellar Meteor 1 (IM1). So far, the crew has recovered more than 50 magnetic balls, which could be pieces of meteors.
In a recent blog post, Loeb described these tiny spheres as spherules and called them anomalies. Indeed, the magnetic ball has a low nickel content, unlike meteorites in general.
“It has been the most exciting experience of my scientific career,” Loeb said of the expedition in a recent interview with Motherboard quoted by SINDOnews from the Live Science page, Tuesday (7/11/2023).
This tiny magnetic ball is believed to have come from a meteorite that streaked across the skies of Papua New Guinea in 2014. US government sensors stationed nearby measured its speed at more than 177,000 km/h.
NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) detected the location of the meteorite fall in the ocean about 85 kilometers offshore. Loeb believes the object, which he calls IM1, is a relic from another star system.
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