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Interstellar object exploded over Earth in 2014, declassified govmt data reveal
- criddell 5y agoWhy was this classified in the first place?
- eesmith 5y agoFrom the linked-to Vice article at https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyp9ez/secret-government-info-confirms-first-known-interstellar-object-on-earth-scientists-say https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyp9ez/secret-government-inf... > Some of the sensors that detect fireballs are operated by the U.S. Department of Defense, which uses the same technologies to monitor the skies for nuclear detonations. As a result, Siraj and Loeb couldn’t directly confirm the margin of error on the fireball’s velocity.
- hirundo 5y ago> The object, a small meteorite measuring just 1.5 feet (0.45 meter) across, So a bit too small to hold baby Kal-El.
- TameAntelope 5y agoAnd landed in the ocean, so he'd have drowned.
- fsloth 5y agoUnless he's a baby octopus. And years after ... oh dear ... "That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die."
- graywh 5y agoor some kind of arthropod and we end up in an Arthur C Clarke novel
- bryanrasmussen 5y agoI think Superbaby would have survived. https://superfriends.fandom.com/wiki/Superbaby https://superfriends.fandom.com/wiki/Superbaby
- outworlder 5y agoThat could have been on purpose and they have gills :)
- fsloth 5y agoExcept unless he's really tiny and cuddly. Like a baby hamster.
- kstrauser 5y agoReal answer: I absolutely love being alive right now. A Higgs boson! Confirmed objects from outside our solar system! A real life picture of a black hole! We’re just at the start of being able to learn these things, and it’s getting better by the year. I love it. Conspiracy answer: The alien probe launched 10,000 years ago just determined that either: 1) Our atmosphere is sufficiently thick to cause the object to disintegrate over seconds instead of instantaneously, meaning there’s enough raw gaseous material to be interesting, or 2) We have an active defense system, meaning the local inhabitants are smart enough to be interesting. In 46 years, when the light reaches its origin around 26 Draconis, observations will be recorded, reports will be filed, and plans will be made.
- shakezula 5y ago> In 46 years, when the light reaches its origin around 26 Draconis, observations will be recorded, reports will be filed, and plans will be made. This gives me Douglas Adams vibes, thinking about an alien species posting plans to invade Earth. "The plans were on display for months" [1] [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/40705-but-the-plans-were-on-display-on-display-i-eventually https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/40705-but-the-plans-were-on...
- kstrauser 5y ago“Well, crud. The survey showed that the shortest route isn’t completely clear.” “Should we report this?” “You really want to do all that paperwork?” “Bulldozer it is.”
- drewzero1 5y ago"Do you have any idea how much damage this bulldozer would suffer if I let it roll right over you?"
- IntrepidWorm 5y agoAbsolutely none.
- dustingetz 5y agoIs the probability of this event not equal to zero then?
- spuz 5y agoThe paper estimates objects of these size should hit Earth at least once per decade. The database goes back to 1988 so there might even be one or two others in there waiting to be detected.
- simne 5y agoUnfortunately, this is like Britain coast length in 1700s - constantly increased, few years more than 100% increase, because of development of science and technologies. And most such objects appear above equatorial locations (because originated from Galaxy plane), where not much science institutions exists.
- Ancalagon 5y agoWow that’s actually incredible. The first confirmed interstellar object impacted earths atmosphere? Really shows how far tech must have come in detecting these events in the last 20 years or so. Also the coincidence of it impacting earth and not Jupiter or any other planetary body or just wizzing by is blowing my mind. Of course we have more sensors around earth so that makes sense but still. I would have thought we would’ve seen something similar to Oumououa prior to this.
- sliken 5y agoGeologist didn't have many sensors for locating earthquakes, but then several governments became very interested in tracking any nuclear testing and those sames sensors are quite good at tracking earthquakes. So much so that earthquakes can now be tracked in 3D anywhere on the planet, even enough to identify the shape and thickness of the various continental plates.
- FredPret 5y agoSometimes throwing money at something… works
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago>The first confirmed interstellar object impacted earths atmosphere? That's mostly just because we don't notice 1.5ft wide rocks in space unless they do something interesting like hit our atmosphere
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- elihu 5y agoIf (presumed) single protons can be considered "objects" there's also the "oh-my-God particle" of 1991. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh-My-God_particle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh-My-God_particle
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- marktangotango 5y ago> The object, a small meteorite measuring just 1.5 feet (0.45 meter) across, slammed into Earth's atmosphere on Jan. 8, 2014, after traveling through space at more than 130,000 mph (210,000 km/h) Can anyone say what percentage of the speed of light that is?
- dkural 5y ago~%0.02 the speed of light. So less one in five thousandth the speed of light.
- pif 5y agoYou can.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- skissane 5y agoAbout 0.02%
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago130,000 / Speed of light: 670,616,629mph = 0.00019385144% the speed of light
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dkural 5y agoThe ratio is not a percent. For example, 1/100 = 0.01 = 1% - i.e. NOT 0.01% So you would get 0.019385144% speed of light in your calculation.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
- motoboi 5y agoSo ʻOumuamua was actually the sail, the real probe arriving in 2014? #joke
- paxys 5y agoTiny meteorite (1.5 feet across) enters Earth's atmosphere and burns up. What is so remarkable about this? Doesn't this happen like every day?
- DocTomoe 5y agoThe interesting aspect is "interstellar" (=from outside the solar system) instead of just "interplanetary", which would imply an origin within the solar system. Stuff from outside is a lot rarer.
- simne 5y agoInterplanetary only need to have 2nd cosmic speed (just slightly about 11km/s), but interstellar must be 3rd cosmic speed, (at Earth much faster than 42km/s). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity#List_of_escape_velocities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity#List_of_escape... BTW interesting, that on some places in Sun system, difference of 2nd and 3rd speeds is much less.
- mikeyouse 5y agoNearly all meteorites are from the asteroid belt -- interstellar origin is the interesting thing here.
- makerofspoons 5y agoMeteors from our own solar system impact the atmosphere every day. One estimate for the frequency of an interstellar meteor hitting Earth is about once per decade: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2019/04/17/interstellar-meteor-likely-struck-earth-in-2014-say-astronomers/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2019/04/17/inters...
- pixl97 5y agoMeteorites from our solar system hit the Earth around 20-30km/h This extrasolar thing hit the Earth at 200km/h+. Remember that the kinetic energy formula = 0.5 * m * v² Is the velocity squared that means something very small can still wipe out an entire city in a gigantic fireball with little to no warning and ability to do anything about it. This is a very big deal for the people looking at things like asteroid defense at civilization time scales.
- spuz 5y agoInterestingly, the database contains two other objects detected with impact speeds of more than 40km/s including one from 2015-07-04 which an even greater speed than this interstellar asteroid. I wonder why these are not also considered to have interstellar origin? Is it because they were accelerated by the sun before colliding with the Earth? The original paper does not mention whether or not they considered the origins of any other objects from the database. https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/fireballs/ https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/fireballs/
- sandworm101 5y agoDirection of travel can make a big difference. If it impacts one side of the earth, the leading side in the earths orbit around the sun, then you need to subtract the earth's orbital velocity. On the opposite side, you need to add earth's velocity to get a true representation of the object's speed around the sun. The earth is also spinning. The atmosphere is moving at basically the same speed as earth's rotation. That too has to be accommodated based on the direction and latitude of the impact. Lastly, something that this paper doesn't address. There is a chance that the object was local to our solar system but had been 'flung' out onto an escape trajectory. Our solar system is a giant multi-body problem. Things can be flung out into space. This rock might have been accelerated to escape velocity by our moon or some other body. So rather than an interstellar object, it may have been a local rock on its way out that just happened to hit earth before leaving the solar system.
- spuz 5y agoGood point about the relative speed of the earth. That could probably explain why the other objects turn out to be more ordinary. As for the idea that this 2014 object originated in our solar system: I don't think that's possible. They were able to project it's incoming trajectory and there were no significant masses that could have directed it path from anywhere other than interstellar space. This is pretty clear from the paper.
- betterburnout 5y agoI sincerely do not understand the interest of the army to hide the presence of such a small meteorite.
- CamperBob2 5y agoIt's not about the meteor, it's about the capacity to detect and track it.
- spockz 5y agoSo the fact that they release this now means that they have an even better detection and tracking mechanism? Or do they just want others to believe that?
- andrewxdiamond 5y agoThis info is classified by default usually. And the memo reads as if astrophysicists were asking the government to confirm or deny this specific bit of info for their research.
- sneak 5y agoThe solar system is huge, and earth is really really tiny. For this to have happened means that it is likely to happen again, which suggests that there is a large amount of crap out there blazing through interstellar space, any sufficiently large piece of which could be a civilization-ending projectile. We need better detection and defenses. And another planet. ASAP.
- peter303 5y agoThe Arachnids are bombing Earth. (Starship Troopers)
- benibela 5y agoAnd they outsourced the flight path planing to the G'Gugvuntts
- d_burfoot 5y agoThe fact that an interstellar object happened by chance to intersect the earth implies that there are millions of such objects flying through the solar system. Most of them probably fly through and are never seen again. We really need to get better at space operations, so we can either catch one of these objects for further study, or at least figure out a way to build a probe that could follow it out of the system.
- spdustin 5y agoScientists also detected a meteor particle that appears to have been extragalactic, with a 300km/s (671,081mph) entry velocity…in 2007! https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S1990341307040013 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S1990341307040013
- seizethegdgap 5y agoA leisurely 6% of C!
- belter 5y ago0.1 % of c ( 300,000 km/sec or 186,000 miles/sec) What is still bloody incredible. That would be a rotation around planet Earth every 2,2 minutes. Or make it to the Moon in 21 minutes.
- seizethegdgap 5y ago...Yeah I forgot the second 60 when converting MPS to MPH, whoops.
- Someone 5y ago0.1%. Speed of light is “299792458 metres per second (approximately 300000 km/s or 186000 mi/s)” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light)
- seizethegdgap 5y ago...Yeah I forgot the second 60 when converting MPS to MPH, whoops.
- Barrin92 5y ago>The possibility of getting the first piece of interstellar material[...] It's very likely that there's interstellar material already on earth from before we were able to detect the impact though, right? Question for the astrophysicists, is there something in the composition of objects that can tell us if something is interstellar in origin?
- IntrepidWorm 5y agoI'm not an astrophysicist, but from what I can gather we want these potential shards off the sea floor for analysis precisely because we're not sure what the makeup of interstellar debris would look like. It would be hard to form a criteria for suspected extrasolar material with such little data at this point.
- simne 5y ago> is there something in the composition of objects that can tell us if something is interstellar in origin? Share of isotopes. - Isotopic analyze at Earth begins countdown from Sun system events, but events on other stars have other timeline and their star also will have other share. Sun is not rare star, but our neighbors stars mostly different. Plus, some of material appear from Novas and Supernovas (it is very like fingerprint of nuke - highly depend on technology available at place where it built and from raw materials from which it built), and it will also be different for thing traveled from other star. Only problem, is that large part of this technology is classified, so scientists will have problems on every step, and some things will be opened to all only in few decades.