The publication of my TED talk about the Galileo Project earlier this week received 200,000 views within a day. From my vantage point as a scientist, such acclaim is “close, but no cigar.” The real reward is in discovering aliens, not talking about them.
From a young age, I tend to focus on the challenges ahead rather than rest on my laurels. As the carrier of a family name that barely survived the holocaust, I am constantly worried. For a farm-boy turned scientist who is genuinely curious about nature, bliss comes with new data. This stands in contrast to solar system experts who know the answer in advance, and who told me when the first interstellar object `Oumuamua showed up: “I wish it never existed.” Wishing that facts go away is the trademark of politicians, not scientists. Alas, scientists sometimes behave like politicians.
During my morning jog at sunrise yesterday, I was particularly concerned that our planned expedition to retrieve large pieces of Interstellar Meteor 1 (IM1) is not funded as of yet. The meteor impacted Earth on January 8, 2014 with a speed that translated to 60 kilometers per second relative to the Local Standard of Rest of the Milky Way galaxy. It was faster than 95% of the stars in the vicinity of the Sun. Could it have been a Voyager-type meteor?
A year ago, on June 14–28, 2023, we visited IM1’s impact site, localized by sensors aboard satellites of the U.S. Department of Defense, which detected the light from IM1’s brilliant fireball. We conducted an extensive towed-magnetic-sled survey over the seafloor and found about 850 molten droplets in the form of spherules of diameter 0.1–1.3 millimeters in our samples. The samples were analyzed by state-of-the-art laboratory instruments including a micro-X-Ray Fluorescence analyzer, Electron Probe Microanalyzer and an Inductive-Coupled-Plasma Mass-spectrometer. We identified 78% of the spherules as primitive with a composition that resembles the primordial material that made the solar system. When rocky planets like the Earth or Mars form with a hot molten rock (magma or lava ocean) on their surface as a result of bombardment by large bodies, some elements from the periodic table which have a chemical affinity to iron migrate towards the iron core and leave behind a modified abundance pattern, which we labeled as “differentiated”. Our analysis revealed that 22% of our spherules were differentiated.
Among the differentiated spherules, about half, namely 10% of the total number of spherules, had a chemical composition that was never reported before in the scientific literature, characterized by an enhanced abundance of some elements up to a thousand times larger than the standard solar composition. We labeled this special set: “BeLaU”-type spherules. The BeLaU composition is unfamiliar and different from the composition of the crust of the Earth, Mars, the Moon, asteroids and comets and potentially flags an origin from outside the solar system. This origin could be natural or artificial.
Imagine throwing a laptop into a fireplace. By retrieving the residual molten droplets, it would be impossible to conclude whether the original object was artificial. The key is to find a piece of the laptop that maintained its integrity. This is the goal of our next expedition to the Pacific Ocean, planned for summer 2025. Aside from identifying the nature of IM1, a large piece would allow us to date the object’s age from its radioactive isotopes, as well as gauge its material strength and thermal properties, potentially explaining why it maintained its integrity despite witnessing atmospheric stress beyond the tolerance of the toughest iron meteorites known in the solar system.
To find larger pieces of IM1, we intend to use a robot, namely a Remotely Operated Vehicle named Hercules, accompanied by a video feed that would allow us to see what we are picking up.
But as they say in Judaism: “If there is no bread, there is no Torah,” namely deep learning cannot occur on an empty stomach. This was my concern yesterday morning. The expedition price tag is $6.5 million and we did not have the funding as of yet. I ruminated yesterday morning that if I had dedicated my early career to business, then I might have been able to fund my current scientific research. But I did not. So, the best I can do now is make the case through writings or talks about the importance of searching for alien artifacts among interstellar objects, given the tremendous implications that a related finding will carry for humanity. Even if we recover clues that IM1 was a rock from another star, it would be the first interstellar rock of a type never seen before and we would learn something new about what lies outside the solar system. Of course, finding a tennis ball thrown by a neighbor would be a completely different ballgame.
Gladly, people draw inspiration from this scientific research. The Kyung Hee University System in Seoul, South Korea, recently offered me the title of an “Eminent Scholar” in their newly established Advanced Studies Program, which fosters leadership to guide humanity towards a more sustainable and harmonious future. I was also invited to serve as a member of the selection committee for its newly established Miwon Peace Prize to promote global wisdom and practice in this new era of civilizational transition. This Prize aims to honor individual(s) or organization(s) that have contributed to creating a transformative social and cultural milieu for human civilization and world peace.
A few hours after my morning jog yesterday, I received an email which started with the words: “I am a big fan of yours”, continued with a plan to fund the next expedition, and ended with the words “What would really make this attractive for us is if we could be there with you.” I replied: “Thank you so much. You made my year!”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. His new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2023.
