Credit: WikipediaUsing a NASA catalog of documented meteor strikes on Earth’s atmosphere, two Harvard University researchers report the detection of the first interstellar meteor ever observed in our solar system. No meteor fragments were recovered, but Loeb says he’s 95% to 99% percent confident that the object that created this 2014 meteor show originated from outside the solar system. Siraj and Loeb say that claims for Earth-striking interstellar meteors date back to at least 1940. But the speeds of such previously-claimed objects tend to hover just above the velocity threshold needed to be of interstellar origin. Understanding the composition of such objects would teach us an enormous amount about the chemistry of other planetary systems, say Siraj.

Source: Forbes April 17, 2019 07:30 UTC