Sound waves regarded as from a 2014 meteor fireball north of Papua New Guinea had been virtually definitely vibrations from a truck rumbling alongside a close-by street, new Johns Hopkins College-led analysis reveals. The findings elevate doubts that supplies pulled final 12 months from the ocean are alien supplies from that meteor, as was extensively reported.
“The sign modified instructions over time, precisely matching a street that runs previous the seismometer,” stated Benjamin Fernando, a planetary seismologist at Johns Hopkins who led the analysis. “It is actually tough to take a sign and make sure it isn’t from one thing. However what we can do is present that there are many alerts like this, and present they’ve all of the traits we would count on from a truck and not one of the traits we would count on from a meteor.”
The group will current its findings March 12 on the Lunar and Planetary Science Convention in Houston.
After a meteor entered Earth’s environment over the Western Pacific in January 2014, the occasion was linked to floor vibrations recorded at a seismic station in Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. In 2023, supplies on the backside of the ocean close to the place the meteor fragments had been thought to have fallen had been recognized as of “extraterrestrial technological” (alien) origin.
However based on Fernando, that supposition depends on misinterpreted knowledge and the meteor truly entered the environment someplace else. Fernando’s group didn’t discover proof of seismic waves from the meteor.
“The fireball location was truly very distant from the place the oceanographic expedition went to retrieve these meteor fragments,” he stated. “Not solely did they use the unsuitable sign, they had been wanting within the unsuitable place.”
Utilizing knowledge from stations in Australia and Palau designed to detect sound waves from nuclear testing, Fernando’s group recognized a extra possible location for the meteor, greater than 100 miles from the world initially investigated. They concluded the supplies recovered from the ocean backside had been tiny, peculiar meteorites — or particles produced from different meteorites hitting Earth’s floor combined with terrestrial contamination.
“No matter was discovered on the ocean flooring is completely unrelated to this meteor, no matter whether or not it was a pure area rock or a bit of alien spacecraft — regardless that we strongly suspect that it wasn’t aliens,” Fernando added.
Fernando’s group contains Constantinos Charalambous of Imperial School London; Steve Desch of Arizona State College; Alan Jackson of Towson College; Pierrick Mialle of the Complete Nuclear-Take a look at-Ban Treaty Group; Eleanor Ok. Sansom of Curtin College; and Göran Ekström of Columbia College.
