- The United States Space Command (USSC) has confirmed a 2014 study from a team of astronomers, noting that government sensors did, in fact, detect a meteor on Earth that originated outside our Solar System.
- The rock is only the third interstellar object ever detected in our system, and the first to enter our atmosphere.
- After scientists publish their research on this meteoric discovery, they may be able to learn more about its contents.
Government sensors on the hunt for fireballs plunging toward Earth have so far logged about 1,000 meteors and asteroids. But only one of them can boast that it traveled through our atmosphere from outside our own Solar System.
This fireball, which shot through our atmosphere over Papua New Guinea in 2014, was no ordinary space rock—it was actually an interstellar meteor, the first ever known to originate outside our system and arrive on Earth. Rocketing at a speed of over 130,000 miles per hour, the rock broke up during its descent, probably scattering interstellar debris into the South Pacific Ocean.
Confirmation of its distant origins arrived only recently, when the United States Space Command (USSC) released a memo on April 6, confirming that the meteor was indeed an interstellar object.
The meteor’s unusually high speed implies a possible origin from the deep interior of a planetary system or a star in the thick disk of the Milky Way galaxy, researchers state.
Source: The Pentagon Just Confirmed the First-Ever Interstellar Visitor to Earth (msn.com)
So sorry, no green men…this time!
