Posted on 04/11/2022 12:22:52 PM PDT by BenLurkin
A fireball that blazed through the skies over Papua New Guinea in 2014 was actually a fast-moving object from another star system, according to a recent memo(opens in new tab) released by the U.S. Space Command (USSC).
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) — a speed that far exceeds the average velocity of meteors that orbit within the solar system, according to a 2019 study of the object published in the preprint database arXiv.
2019 study argued that the wee meteor's speed, along with the trajectory of its orbit, proved with 99% certainty that the object had originated far beyond our solar system — possibly "from the deep interior of a planetary system or a star in the thick disk of the Milky Way galaxy...
USSC scientists have officially confirmed the team's findings. In a memo dated March 1 and shared on Twitter on April 6, Lt. Gen. John E. Shaw, deputy commander of the USSC, wrote that the 2019 analysis of the fireball was "sufficiently accurate to confirm an interstellar trajectory."
This confirmation retroactively makes the 2014 meteor the first interstellar object ever detected in our solar system, the memo added. The object's detection predates the discovery of 'Oumuamua — a now-infamous, cigar-shaped object that is also moving far too fast to have originated in our solar system — by three years, according to the USSC memo. (Unlike the 2014 meteor, 'Oumuamua was detected far from Earth and is already speeding out of the solar system, according to NASA(opens in new tab).)
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
It looks like they went through the following steps:
Here's the relevant quote from the ArXiv preprint, Section 3.2 Size Distribution:
"Given the impact speed of the meteor, ∼ 44.8 km s−1, and the total impact energy, 4.6 × 1018 ergs, the meteor mass was approximately 4.6 × 105 g. Assuming bulk density values of 1.7 g/cm3 and 0.9 g/cm3 for Type II and Type IIIa objects respectively, we obtain a radius, R, of 0.4m - 0.5m for a spherical geometry (Ceplecha 1988; Palotai et al. 2018)."This appears to be just an approximation to give an idea of the size, but it's probably about right. I don't think they give an error estimate.
This is a hopeless spoiler alert but I will say the words anyway:
“The Expanse”
Nope. Not that story arc. But I did like that one.
I’m betting some tribesmen has a head hanging inside his hut that he didn’t need to shrink.
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