In early 2014, a dishwasher-size meteor dashed over the shores of Papua New Guinea before sunrise as it burned up in the fiery friction of Earth’s atmosphere. But two Harvard researchers argued that this wasn’t just any space rock: It originated from another star system, they said, making it the first observed meteor of interstellar origin.They wrote up the extraordinary claim and submitted it to an astronomy journal. But the paper was not accepted for publication. Reviewers noted a lack of sufficient detail to verify the claim about the fireball in the published data, which came from a NASA database and relied on readings that were obscured because they were from U.S. intelligence community satellites, and could reveal how the military monitors missile launches.“We had thought this was a lost cause,” said one of the researchers, Amir Siraj,a Harvard undergraduate student studying astrophysics. Without the more thorough data, he conceded, it was difficult “to figure out whether the object was truly interstellar or not.”But, it turned out, the truth was out there. Last month, the U.S. Space Command released a memo to NASA scientists that stated the data from the missile warning satellites’ sensors “was sufficiently accurate to indicate an interstellar trajectory” for the meteor. The publication of the memo was the culmination of a three-year effort by Mr. Siraj and a well-known Harvard astronomer, Avi Loeb.Many scientists, including those at NASA, say that the military still has not released enough data to confirm the interstellar origins of the space rock, and a spokeswoman said Space Command would defer to other authorities on the question. But it wasn’t the only information about meteors to be released. The military also handed NASA decades of secret military data on the brightness of hundreds of other fireballs, or bolides.“It’s an unusual degree of visibility of a set of data coming from that world,” said Matt Daniels, assistant director for space security at the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, who worked on the data release. “We’re in this renewed period of excitement and activity in space programs generally, and in the midst of that, I think thoughtful leaders in multiple places said, ‘you know, now is a good time to do this.’”In recent years, a pair of objects that passed through our immediate stellar neighborhood drew considerable attention because they were confirmed to have originated outside the solar system. The first object was Oumuamua, a long, flat body that zoomed through the solar system in 2017. Dr. Loeb, one of the two who studied the 2014 meteorite, has also attracted attention and dispute by arguing that Oumuamua was technology sent by intelligent life. Other astronomers are still debating what kind of natural object it was.In 2019, Borisov, a comet roughly the size of the Eiffel Tower, became the second confirmed interstellar visitor. A piece of it broke off in 2020 after it rounded the sun.While data from classified military satellites may not have aided the study of those interstellar visitors, they could help academic researchers study objects closer to Earth. They could also aid NASA in its federally assigned role as defender of planet Earth from killer asteroids. And that is the goal of a new agreement with the U.S. Space Force that aims to help NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office better understand what happens when space rocks reach the atmosphere.Dr. Daniels at the White House played a key role in the Harvard researchers’ effort to clinch a public statement from Space Command. After getting rejected from The Astrophysical Journal Lettersa peer-reviewed scientific publication, Dr. Loeb said he contacted a colleague at Los Alamos National Lab who eventually connected him with Dr. Daniels. The White House official then brought up the meteor in a conversation with Space Command officials in 2020, which kick-started government efforts to make a public statement on the military satellite’s data about the purported interstellar meteor.“I knew that this would be a challenge, and so it was an ongoing conversation for some time,” Dr. Daniels said.ImageA Perseid meteor seen from the I.S.S. Some astronomers believe more data is needed to confirm if the object observed in 2014 was a meteor.Credit...NASASharing sensitive military satellite data with astronomers has led to significant scientific discoveries in the past.A group of satellites deployed in the 1960s by the United States to detect covert detonations of nuclear weapons on Earth accidentally became the key instruments used to make the first detection of extraterrestrial gamma ray bursts. The bursts showed up on the satellites, code named Vela, as single bursts of energy, confusing analysts at Los Alamos National LabBy: Joey Roulette
Title: Military Memo Deepens Mystery of Possible Interstellar Visitor to Earth
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/science/interstellar-meteor-debate.html
Published Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2022 09:00:17 +0000
Read More
Did you miss our previous article...
https://badpoliticians.com/us-politics/justice-dept-the-justice-dept
UK PoliticsWorld PoliticsVideosPrivacy PolicyTerms And Conditions
