US Military Confirms an Interstellar Meteorite Hit Earth in 2014

Oumuamua, the oblong object some scientists argued was propelled, was not the first tracked interstellar object.

www.msn.com...

"As you may be aware, Dr. Amir Siraj and Dr. Abraham Loeb of the Department of Astronomy of Harvard University authored a paper titled Discovery of a Meteor of Interstellar Origin. The paper identified a meteor detected on 2014-01-08 at 17:05:34 UTC. The paper reported the meteor as originating from an unbound hyperbolic orbit (defined as interstellar space hereafter) with 99.999% confidence. This event would predate the discovery of 'Oumuamua by about 3 years."

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www.vice.com...

The secret data threw the paper into limbo as the researchers sought to get confirmation from the U.S. government. Siraj called the multi-year process a “whole saga” as they navigated a bureaucratic labyrinth that wound its way though Los Alamos National Laboratory, NASA, and other governmental arms, before ultimately landing at the desk of Joel Mozer, Chief Scientist of Space Operations Command at the U.S. Space Force service component of USSC.

Link to the Space Force Twitter thread:
twitter.com...

Folks within our government were well aware Oumuamua was not the first interstellar visitor in our solar system. They sat on knowledge that we had actually been hit by an interstellar object.

So much for trust...

a reply to: GenerationGap

Technically or Earth gets hit with around 17 meteorites every day.

Most of which i assume to be from the asteroid belt as opposed to being of interstellar origins.

Cool find all the same.

a reply to: GenerationGap

Technically an interstellar meteorite cannot possibly hit the Earth unless someone drops it. It is not defined as a meteorite until it is on the ground. In the air, it is a meteor. In space, it is a meteoroid.

The words were probably misused by the wrighters of the articles and not the scientists involved.

originally posted by: beyondknowledge
a reply to: GenerationGap

Technically an interstellar meteorite cannot possibly hit the Earth unless someone drops it. It is not defined as a meteorite until it is on the ground. In the air, it is a meteor. In space, it is a meteoroid.

The words were probably misused by the wrighters of the articles and not the scientists involved.

Ironically using "wrighters" instead of writers.

However, the thread seems to be about our government will lie either by incompetence or by a need to keep secrets on something that seems benign as meteors and asteroids

a reply to: GenerationGap

Oumuamua, the oblong object some scientists argued was propelled

That lost that debate .

originally posted by: putnam6

originally posted by: beyondknowledge
a reply to: GenerationGap

Technically an interstellar meteorite cannot possibly hit the Earth unless someone drops it. It is not defined as a meteorite until it is on the ground. In the air, it is a meteor. In space, it is a meteoroid.

The words were probably misused by the wrighters of the articles and not the scientists involved.

Ironically using "wrighters" instead of writers.

However, the thread seems to be about our government will lie either by incompetence or by a need to keep secrets on something that seems benign as meteors and asteroids

They weren’t keeping secrets about asteroids and meteorites and they didn’t lie. They were keeping secrets about how good our ability is to detect and track small, dense, high speed objects entering the Earth’s atmosphere—such as nuclear missile warheads. If our adversaries knew how good or poor our sensors are, then they would know how to defeat them.

The reason I know this is because before I retired from NASA about 6 years ago, I was in the process of being read in to this program, and you needed to have a TS/SCI clearance as the price of admission.

Coincidentally, a couple of years after 2014 is when some of our "leaders" started acting strangely.

Time to begin our assault on Kandathu. It's an ugly planet, a bug planet.

a reply to: VictorVonDoom

I want to know more

originally posted by: VictorVonDoom
Coincidentally, a couple of years after 2014 is when some of our "leaders" started acting strangely.

👽🛸🥃

I knew it, this was the year the troubles in the Ukraine really began.
You solved it….what triggered the Russian invasion.
You need to write another OP!!!

Nice Job…..👍




a reply to: GenerationGap

originally posted by: putnam6

originally posted by: beyondknowledge
a reply to: GenerationGap

Technically an interstellar meteorite cannot possibly hit the Earth unless someone drops it. It is not defined as a meteorite until it is on the ground. In the air, it is a meteor. In space, it is a meteoroid.

The words were probably misused by the wrighters of the articles and not the scientists involved.

Ironically using "wrighters" instead of writers.

However, the thread seems to be about our government will lie either by incompetence or by a need to keep secrets on something that seems benign as meteors and asteroids

That’s a good point about benign.

Which this case means a “benign” interstellar object.

Now I wonder… is it because they are not a problem? If not a problem, why care? Just say “hey this is benign, common, no big deal”. Well, you can’t because too many people would say “that’s not right…” because (to common knowledge) interstellar asteroids or asteroid impacts are not common if not nonexistent. You’d have to know it’s benign or meaningless if you didn’t hide it. Said another way, if it causes no worry or concern it has no value thus it wouldn’t be hidden or need to be.

So an interstellar asteroid must not be benign, meaningless or common. How do we know? What wouldn’t be benign about them? What are we worried about that requires the secrecy? If we’re not worried, what’s the meaning or value worth protecting?

I bet answers to those questions would yield some pretty interesting information.

This thing burned up in the atmosphere and never "impacted" the ground. The term "Hit" means the object entered Earth atmosphere in the context of the way the original documents were written, and exploded. Nothing impacted the ground at cosmic velocity and probably nothing was left as nothing was found. The object was detected and tracked back to a non-solar system origin trajectory.

Thousands of meteors "Hit" the Earth every day, of all sizes, but the atmosphere destroys them to smoke and dust. Larger ones explode, producing meteorites, but they fall to Earth at terminal velocity. Every few decades a meteor (usually an Iron) will make it to the surface at cosmic velocity, but will most likely falls into the oceans. Anything making it to terra firma will certainly make the news ---- unless it is really huge, in which case there will be no audience.

originally posted by: 1947boomer

originally posted by: putnam6

originally posted by: beyondknowledge
a reply to: GenerationGap

Technically an interstellar meteorite cannot possibly hit the Earth unless someone drops it. It is not defined as a meteorite until it is on the ground. In the air, it is a meteor. In space, it is a meteoroid.

The words were probably misused by the wrighters of the articles and not the scientists involved.

Ironically using "wrighters" instead of writers.

However, the thread seems to be about our government will lie either by incompetence or by a need to keep secrets on something that seems benign as meteors and asteroids

They weren’t keeping secrets about asteroids and meteorites and they didn’t lie. They were keeping secrets about how good our ability is to detect and track small, dense, high speed objects entering the Earth’s atmosphere—such as nuclear missile warheads. If our adversaries knew how good or poor our sensors are, then they would know how to defeat them.

The reason I know this is because before I retired from NASA about 6 years ago, I was in the process of being read in to this program, and you needed to have a TS/SCI clearance as the price of admission.

As a young kid in1972 one evening I looked up and something massive well over a kilometre whizzed over my head very low ,I have parachuted from higher about 10.000 ft up a glowing red rock like pumice , no-one would believe me but years ago I found a video on YouTube about the Apollo object of1972 the daylight meteor.

I think Richard Hoagland wrote about it in his book the city on the edge of forever in the early printing but it seems to have vanished in the 5th edition along with the kinetic effects of NASA crashing things on airless world's ! and in areas of scientific interest

Coming back to update this... Harvard bloke wants to fish magnet this thing out of the sea:
thedebrief.org...

The debris from CNEOS-2014-01-08 landed on the ocean floor near Papua New Guinea and it is possible to scoop them with a magnet. Once collected, we could place our hands around sizeable chunks of interstellar matter and examine its composition and nature. The ocean on site is a couple of kilometers deep, and the impact region is uncertain to within ten kilometers. But an expedition to explore this region for meteor fragments is feasible, and we are currently engaged in designing it.

The fundamental question is whether any interstellar meteor might indicate a composition that is unambiguously artificial in origin? Better still, perhaps some technological components would survive the impact. My dream is to press some buttons on a functional piece of equipment that was manufactured outside of Earth.

About the author:
lweb.cfa.harvard.edu...