Did ‘alien’ debris hit Earth? Startling claim sparks row at scientific meeting
Did ‘alien’ debris hit Earth? Startling claim sparks row at scientific meeting
Astrophysicist Avi Loeb says that an interstellar meteor showered Earth with particles. At a planetary-science conference this week, researchers begged to differ.
During his presentation, Fu described tiny metallic blobs that Loeb’s expedition dredged from the sea floor near Papua New Guinea last year, and said that the spherules have a chemical composition of unknown origin.
Loeb made headlines when he speculated that the object, a comet-like body named ‘Oumuamua, was an artefact sent by an extraterrestrial civilization.
‘Oumuamua passed through the Solar System far from Earth, but Loeb hoped to find another interstellar object that had hit the planet. He later proposed that a bright meteor that appeared in the sky north of Papua New Guinea in January 2014 had an interstellar trajectory and could have scattered debris in the ocean.