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In January 2014, a meteor fell from space off the coast of Papua New Guinea. That might have been the end, but several years later, Avi Loeb, a theoretical astrophysicist at Harvard, drew on seismic data near the site, searched for wreckage on the ocean floor, and proposed that the debris “may reflect a technology alien”. origin.”
Dr. Loeb has previously been accused by colleagues of wild speculation and sensationalism. Last fall, Benjamín Fernando, a planetary seismologist at Johns Hopkins University, led a team that reexamined nearby seismic signals and concluded that They were not evidence of the alienor something similar.
On Tuesday, Dr. Fernando will present the data in detail at a scientific conference. Recently, he sat down with The New York Times to preview what his team had found. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
How did all this start?
In 2014, a meteor entered the atmosphere and “exploded.” These meteors are sometimes heard on seismometers. Avi Loeb wrote an article to say that he had found the seismic signal of this meteor and that he had used it to locate exactly where the remains of the meteorite fell. And from there, they set up an expedition and collected things from the bottom of the sea.
In a paper, Dr. Loeb and a co-author wrote that they “confirmed the location of the fireball” in the ocean starting at the “time of the strong seismic signal.” But you’ve determined that the seismic data didn’t come from a meteor. What do you think it comes from?
A truck.
Like in a hyperspeed alien truck?
No, it was a normal truck, like a normal truck that passes in front of a seismometer. Not being seismologists, Loeb’s team may have misinterpreted the data. In reality, all they did was find a truck.
And where is that truck going? In the Milky Way?
No no no. The truck was traveling on the same island of Papua New Guinea. It is an ordinary land truck. I guess technically that’s in the Milky Way!
How did you come to the conclusion that we are not being invaded by aliens?
We analyzed two weeks of data at the time of this event. We saw hundreds of signals similar to the one Loeb studied. If there are hundreds, they cannot all be meteorites. Of those hundreds of signals, most occur during daylight hours. What Loeb saw, what we saw, a lot more happens during the day. That is an indication of anthropogenic noise.
Man-made noise?
Yeah.
Then we looked at the exact sign he was looking at, and it came from a main road. Over time, he turned from a main road towards a hospital and then back to the main road. So, analyzing the data, it seems to us that it is much more likely that the signal came from a truck that left the main road, passed the seismometer near the hospital, and then drove in the wrong direction.
There was no meteorite involved.
In the conclusion of his article, he writes that he has “a very high degree of confidence that the supposed meteor fragments recovered from the seabed have nothing to do with the fireball” and, therefore, that the material torn from the ocean floor It was probably just material from Earth, or maybe a little from the thousands of tons of meteorites that reach Earth each year. So we shouldn’t worry that aliens are invading our hospitals?
You would be reasonably justified in No Worry about aliens invading hospitals.
What is the most important lesson from all this?
There are two: One, if you want to do a seismic analysis, the ideal is to first consult with a seismologist. The other is that they are not aliens.