The information went relatively unnoticed in 2014. At that time, a fireball was observed on the night of January 8-9 over Papua New Guinea. Then two scientists hypothesized that this small meteor, 45 centimeters long when it hit our planet, came from outside our solar system. They came to this conclusion in particular because the meteorite was moving at a speed of 210,000 km / h, much more than the usual speed of a meteorite in our solar system.

This study, which was never published, was kept secret until its April 7 publication by the US Space Command, which confirmed that this meteorite was the first interstellar object ever observed on Earth. “The article stated that the meteor came from an unbound hyperbolic orbit (later defined as interstellar space) with 99.999% certainty. Dr. Moser (one of the study’s authors, editor’s note) confirmed that the velocity estimate reported by NASA is accurate enough to indicate that Interstellar Path”, can we read in this document.

Amir Siraj, the other scientist behind this study, now hopes to launch an expedition to find the interstellar object, which could be on the ocean floor in the South Pacific.

Two more objects have been discovered in space

Three years after this interstellar object was discovered, another interstellar polyide was discovered inside our solar system on October 19, 2017. Named ‘Oumuamua, whose name means messenger in the Hawaiian language, this object was spotted by Pan-STARRS1 located in Hawaii. In 2019, another interstellar object, Borisov, was observed in our solar system.