This meteorite is known as CNEOS 2014-01-08. It crashed on January 8, 2014, but just last week government officials confirmed the origin of this space rock.
The meteorite was identified as “interstellar” or beyond the solar system by Amir Siraj in 2019. At the time, Siraj, a Harvard University student, was working to establish his findings with his academic advisor, Abraham Loeb. , Professor of Science at The University.
Siraj wrote about this process for Scientific American. He was studying what was then considered the first known interstellar meteorite called Oumuamua, which was located in October 2017.
Although he and Loeb were confident of their findings on CNEOS 2014-01-08 and three years ahead of Oumuamua, the scientific journals refused to publish their report because their data came from a database of NASA that does not disclose certain information.
Last Wednesday, U.S. Space Force Lt. Gen. John Shaw tweeted a statement that officially confirmed their findings, saying “the speed estimate reported by NASA is accurate enough to indicate an interstellar orbit.”
Officials used the findings of Siraj and Loeb, as well as additional information obtained from the US Department of Defense, to make this confirmation official.
The 2014 meteorite is now one of three such interstellar meteorites to be confirmed to date, along with Oumuamua and interstellar comet Borisov, Siraj wrote in Scientific American.
Siraj said he hopes more research will be done on such interstellar meteorites to learn even more about them.
He wrote: “We are currently investigating whether a mission to the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Manus Island, in the hope of finding fragments of the 2014 meteorite, could be fruitful or even possible.”
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