As of: March 12, 2024, 12:14 p.m
By: Tanja Banner
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Astronomer Avi Loeb is known for his controversial theories.
Now he could be on the wrong track in his search for a meteorite.
Baltimore - Astronomer Abraham (Avi) Loeb, known for his theory that the interstellar object 'Oumuamua is an "alien spacecraft," went searching for meteorite fragments in the Pacific near Papua New Guinea last year.
He believed that the meteorite came from somewhere outside our solar system.
However, his theory and his search for the meteorite fragment received significant criticism from the research community.
A research team led by planetary seismologist Benjamin Fernando of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore now claims that Loeb and his team may have been looking in the wrong place.
They argue that the team was looking in the wrong place due to a faulty interpretation of seismometer data.
The study has not yet been reviewed by experts; it is available on the preprint server ArXiv.
Astronomer Avi Loeb is said to have been looking in the wrong place
Fernando's team analyzed the seismometer data that Loeb used and came to a surprising conclusion: The sound waves thought to be from the meteorite north of Papua New Guinea were apparently the vibrations of a truck driving along a nearby road .
“The signal changed direction over time and corresponded exactly to a road that passes the seismometer,” explains Fernando in a statement.
Astronomer Avi Loeb is searching for fragments of the interstellar meteorite IM1.
© Owen Humphreys/dpa
In an interview with the
New York Times
, the researcher explains that his team examined two weeks of data surrounding the supposed meteorite fall.
“We have seen hundreds of signals similar to the one Loeb studied.
If there are hundreds, they can’t all be meteors,” he emphasizes.
“Of these hundreds of signals, most occur in daylight.
The signal that Loeb saw and the signals that we saw all occur much more frequently during the day.
This is an indication of anthropogenic noise.”
Sound waves probably don't come from a meteor, but from a truck
It is difficult to confirm that a signal does not come from a specific thing, the researcher admits and continues: “But we can show that there are many such signals and that they have all the properties that we expect from a truck but none of the properties we would expect from a meteor.”
The team has also identified a more suitable location to search for the meteorite fragments, which is more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the actual search location.
“The location of the fireball was very far from the place where the oceanographic expedition found these meteorite fragments,” emphasizes Fernando.
“Not only did you use the wrong signal, you also looked in the wrong place.”
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Material from the sea floor could be “normal” meteorites
Fernando believes that the material Loeb and his team collected from the ocean floor are ordinary meteorites or fragments of meteorites mixed with terrestrial dirt.
"Whatever was found on the ocean floor has nothing to do with this meteor, whether it is a natural space rock or a piece of an alien spacecraft - even if we strongly suspect it was not aliens," said he.
The astronomer Abraham (Avi) Loeb always causes controversy.
(Archive image) © AFP /Lotem Loeb
Loeb has already responded to the new publication and wrote online that his team relied primarily on data from the US Department of Defense.
“There is nothing that can be said to people who want to dismiss reliable information from the Department of Defense,” he wrote.
It seems that the story of the supposedly first interstellar meteorite is not yet complete.
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