This summer, a team of Galileo Project scientists led by Avi Loeb recovered scores of tiny metal balls from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.. According to Loeb, these are fragments of either an interstellar meteorite or an alien probe that exploded over Earth in January 2014. After the first publications of data on the composition of the samples, the scientific community criticized this statement.
Image source: AI generation Kandinsky 2.2 / 3DNews
In the fall, several articles appeared on the discovery of the Galileo project team.. They, like Avi Loeb’s articles, have not been published in leading scientific journals and are only available on the arXiv website. Actually, the dispute is being waged either on this platform or in the media.
Data on the entry into the Earth's atmosphere of a certain interstellar body weighing about 460 kg at a speed of about 60 km/s are based on an official statement from the US Department of Defense. There is no other reliable evidence of the event. A number of scientists believe that military sensors produced erroneous parameters and cannot be unconditionally trusted. But even if the speed of the object corresponds to the declared one, which indicates its arrival from outside our galaxy, there would be little left of it after entering the atmosphere – a meteorite or something else would completely evaporate upon impact with the air. There would be nothing to raise from the bottom of the ocean.
“If the 2014-01-08 fireball had been interstellar, virtually nothing of it would have survived re-entry, ” write the new study’s authors, Professors Stephen Desch of Arizona State University and Alan Jackson of Towson University.. – If it were traveling at the reported speed (which should be interstellar), then at least 99.8%, and possibly >99.9999% of it would evaporate into the atmosphere, leaving a negligible amount to settle on the seabed.”
There is also the problem of proving that the samples were obtained from this particular meteorite. Scientists don't know where the 2014 meteor fell or if it fell at all. Finally, it would be extremely difficult to find tiny pieces of this particular meteorite by searching the ocean within a 48 km radius almost 10 years after its appearance. On the other hand, small metal balls are found everywhere on the seabed. Some of them are micrometeorites, others are erupted by volcanoes or formed as a result of the industrial activities of our civilization.. They naturally accumulate on the ocean floor over time.
However, an expedition from the area of Papua New Guinea, over which an interstellar celestial body supposedly disintegrated, brought images collected from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean in the form of magnetic submillimeter-sized metal balls. Samples were collected using a magnetic trawl. Meteorite matter is known to be magnetic, so you can, for example, distinguish an ordinary rock from a rock from outer space.
Samples of an interstellar meteorite recovered from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Image source: Galileo Project
In an article on the arXiv website, Loeb described the “anomalous” properties of the samples found. In particular, he drew attention to five balls that contained a high percentage of beryllium, lanthanum and uranium. He called these five samples “BeLaU-spherules”. Subsequently, he and other researchers suggested that these strange balls could be evidence of alien technology.
If we assume the cosmic origin of the samples, then they really look strange and are extremely different in composition from anything that has been encountered before. However, as noted in a paper published Oct. 23 in the journal Research Notes of the AAS , the samples match the profile of substances found in coal ash.. Study author Patricio Gallardo, an astronomer at the University of Chicago, writes that this makes “meteorite origin unlikely.”
As NASA astrobiologist Caleb Scharf wrote on site X, formerly known as Twitter: “Well, they actually found evidence of a technological civilization…. right here on Earth.”
But Avi Loeb continues to insist on his version. In particular, he says that without directly studying the samples, and no one except him analyzed them, it is impossible to draw any conclusions. As for the statement about the terrestrial origin of samples from coal combustion, in the search region, according to scientists, there should be no coal mineralization. Finally, ash waste is not magnetic, which also refutes the terrestrial nature of the samples.
The scientist claims that 93% of the collected samples have not yet been analyzed, and warned critics against jumping to conclusions about the origins of the spheres until all the data is available. Making definitive statements about the nature of the balls before they have been properly analyzed in a peer-reviewed study would be “unprofessional,” says a proponent of the interstellar origin of the samples.