A new study by two Harvard researchers shows a small meteor crashed into Earth in 2014 near Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific. According to their research, the 1.5-foot-wide object most likely came all the way from another solar system.
It could take humanity hundreds, if not thousands, of years to develop the capability to explore interstellar space. Until then, interstellar space can just come to us.
A new study by two Harvard researchers reveals the cosmos may have already deposited the first such far-flung visitor onto our doorstep five years ago in 2014, when a small meteor crashed into Earth near Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific. According to their research, this 1.5-foot-wide object most likely came all the way from another solar system.A message in a bottle Think about it: An object, originating untold miles and millennia away, just plopping into the sea.
RELATED: Fossils created by asteroid that annihilated dinosaurs discovered. 01:02Read MoreA time capsuleLoeb and his co-author Amir Siraj studied the velocity of objects entering the Earth's atmosphere, which can be used to predict whether the object was traveling in relation to our sun's orbit. "What we did was take the properties of the meteor and take the velocity at the time of impact and extrapolate whether it was bound to the sun or not," Loeb says.
RELATED: Doorstop turns out to be meteorite valued at $100,000 00:35Of all of the possibilities wrapped up in this relatively small object, perhaps the most exciting is the idea that, theoretically, interstellar objects could carry life from other solar systems. "Most importantly, there is a possibility that life could be transferred between stars," Loeb says."In principle, life could survive in the core of a rock.
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