Description

Avi Loeb's initial paper regarding his findings from "IM1 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNEOS_2014-01-08)" aka "Interstellar Meteor #1" allegedly comes out tomorrow, August 29, 2023. However, one of the secondary researchers/authors on the paper Tweeted about it and included a screenshot of the title page + the abstract and introduction of the paper (https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1696329720965566621). Click through to the tweet to read the screenshot of the paper yourself! I will update this post when the full paper his arXiv.org, which allegedly will be very shortly.

The paper is titled "Discovery of spherules of likely extrasolar composition in the Pacific Ocean site of the CNEOS 2014-01-08 (IM1) bolide"

Major take-aways from Avi's paper on IM1:

* They found 700 spherules using their magnetic sled, and thus far have analyzed 57 of the 700 spherules.
* They conducted mass-spectrometry on 47 of the 57 analyzed spherules thus far. Of those 47, 5 spherules reveal "a distinct extra-solar abundance pattern."
* The "extra-solar" spherules have abundances of the elements Be, La and U, (abbreviated "BeLaU") by up to 3 orders of magnitude more than materials found within the solar-system do.
* "The 'BeLaU' abundance pattern is not found in control regions outside of IM1's path and does not match commonly manufactured alloys or natural meteorites in the solar system."
* This evidence points towards an association of "BeLaU"-type spherules with IM1, supporting its interstellar origin independently of the high velocity and unusual material strength implied from the CNEOS data.
* They suggest that the "BeLaU" abundance pattern could have originated from a highly differentiated magma ocean of a planet with an iron core outside the solar system or from more exotic sources.

This set of IM1 findings from Avi Loeb is highly relevant to the /r/UFOs community as it has previously been speculated that IM1 may be a techno-signature from an extraterrestrial civilization due to what was previously known about it (its high rate of speed, abnormally high material strength, etc.)

*Unfortunately, Avi Loeb's research is not able to confirm this techno-signature hypothesis at this time.* However, t*hat last bullet point - "or from more exotic sources" - means that the hypothesis that IM1 is a potential techno-signature from an extraterrestrial civilization is not ruled out! So, not confirmed evidence (yet), but also not definitively natural origins either.* It's worth noting that further research regarding this techno-signature hypothesis is pending, but initial evidence appears currently insufficient to support this hypothesis. Avi said in an interview with The Hill yesterday (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqwnWkS6vbA) that he hopes to find larger pieces of "IM1" on a future mission that will allow him to confirm or disprove the techno-signature hypothesis, and seemed to imply it was not possible with spherules the size he currently has recovered. That said, the fact that IM1 appears to definitively be of interstellar origins, and its material composition does not match the material compositions typically found in our solar system is still highly interesting!

The abstract of the paper is as follows:

Abstract. We have conducted an extensive towed-magnetic-sled survey during the period of 14-28 June, 2023, over the seafloor about 85 km north of Manus Island, Papa New Guinea, and found about 700 spherules of diameter 0.05-1.3 millimeters in our samples, of which 57 were analyzed so far. Approximately 0.26km\^2 of seafloor was sampled in this survey, centered around the calculated path of the bolide CNEOS 2014-01-08 (IM1) with control areas north and south of that path. The spherules, significantly concentrated along the expected meteor path, were retrieved from seafloor depths ranging between 1.5-2.2km. Mass spectrometry of 47 spherules near the high-yield regions along IM1's path reveals a distinct extra-solar abundance pattern for 5 of them, while background spherules have abundances consistent with a solar system origin. The unique spherules show an excess of Be, La an U, by up to three orders of magnitude relative to the solar system standard of CI chondrites. These "BeLaU"-type spherules, never seen before, also have very low refractory siderophile elements such as Re. Volatile elements, such as Mn, Zn, Pb, are depleted as expected from evaporation losses during a meteor's airburst. In addition, the mass-dependent variations in Fe57/Fe54 and Fe56/Fe54 are also consistent with evaporative loss of the light isotopes during the spherules' travel in the atmosphere. The "BeLaU" abundance pattern is not found in control regions outside of IM1's path and does not match commonly manufactured alloys or natural meteorites in the solar system. This evidence points towards an association of "BeLaU"-type spherules with IM1, supporting its interstellar origin independently of the high velocity and unusual material strength implied from the CNEOS data. We suggest that the "BeLaU" abundance pattern could have originated from a highly differentiated magma ocean of a planet with an iron core outside the solar system or from more exotic sources.

The tweet also includes a screenshot of the introduction section of the paper, which is as follows:

1. Introduction

On 8 January 2014 US government satellite sensors detected three atmospheric detonations in rapid succession about 84 km north of Manus Island, outside the territorial waters of Papa New Guinea (20km). Analysis of the trajectory suggested an interstellar origin of the causative object CNEOS 2014-01-08: an arrival velocity relative to Earth in excess of ~45km/s\^-1, and a vector tracked back to outside the plane of the ecliptic (Siraj and Loeb, 2022a). The object's speed relative to the Local Standard of Rest of the Milky-Way galaxy, ~60km/s\^-1, was higher than 95% of the stars in the Sun's vicinity.

In 2022 the US Space Command issued a formal letter to NASA certifying a 99.999% likelihood that the object was interstellar in origin. Along with this letter, the US Government released the fireball light curve as measured by satellites, which showed there flares separated by a tenth of a second from each other. The bolide broke apart at an unusually low altitude of ~17km, corresponding to a ram pressure of ~200MPa. This implied that the object was substantially stronger than any of the otehr 272 objects in the CNEOS catalog, including the ~5% fraction of iron meteorites from the solar system (Siraj and Loeb, 2022b). Calculations of the fireball light energy suggest that about 500 kg of material was ablated by the fireball and converted into ablation spherules with a small efficiency (Tillinghast-Raby et al., 2022). The fireball path was localized to a 1 km-wide strip based on the delay in arrival time of the direct and reflected sound waves to a seismometer located on Manus Island (Siraj and Loeb, 2023).

Despite the IM1 findings likely being disappointing to the /r/UFOs community (as I'm sure many here were hoping Avi would confirm IM1 to be a techno-signature of an extra-terrestrial civilization), we should nonetheless commend Avi for his pursuit of breakthrough areas of science, and having recovered the first interstellar-originated material ever on planet earth! IM1 being of interstellar origins is still a huge scientific discovery. Even if of natural origins, the IM1 materials recovered will likely produce many future pieces of research/papers, and potentially some novel scientific discoveries. Plus it sounds like Avi is already planning future expeditions to try to recover larger pieces of IM1 to pursue the techno-signature hypothesis.

Lastly, the techno-signature hypothesis is still not ruled out! While IM1 appears to certainly be interstellar, Avi himself stated that it may originate "from more exotic sources," than the core of a planet.