By Stephen Beech via SWNS
An “interstellar” signal linked to aliens was actually a truck, according to new research.
Sound waves believed to be from a 2014 meteor fireball north of Papua New Guinea were almost certainly vibrations from a truck rumbling along a nearby road, say scientists.
Their findings raise doubts that debris pulled last year from the ocean are “alien materials” from that meteor, as was widely reported.
Research leader Dr. Benjamin Fernando said: “The signal changed directions over time, exactly matching a road that runs past the seismometer.
“It’s really difficult to take a signal and confirm it is not from something.
“But what we can do is show that there are lots of signals like this, and show they have all the characteristics we’d expect from a truck and none of the characteristics we’d expect from a meteor.”
After a meteor entered Earth’s atmosphere over the Western Pacific in January 2014, the event was linked to ground vibrations recorded at a seismic station in Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island.
In 2023, materials at the bottom of the ocean near where the meteor fragments were thought to have fallen were identified as of “extraterrestrial technological” origin.
But, according to Dr. Fernando, that supposition relies on misinterpreted data and the meteor actually entered the atmosphere somewhere else.
Dr. Fernando’s team, including Dr. Constantinos Charalambous of Imperial College London, did not find evidence of seismic waves from the meteor.
Dr. Fernando, a planetary seismologist at Johns Hopkins University in the US, said: “The fireball location was actually very far away from where the oceanographic expedition went to retrieve these meteor fragments.
“Not only did they use the wrong signal, they were looking in the wrong place.”
Using data from stations in Australia and Palau designed to detect sound waves from nuclear testing, Dr. Fernando’s team identified a more likely location for the meteor, more than 100 miles from the area initially investigated.
They concluded the materials recovered from the ocean bottom were tiny, ordinary meteorites – or particles – produced from other meteorites hitting Earth’s surface mixed with terrestrial contamination.
Dr. Fernando added: “Whatever was found on the sea floor is totally unrelated to this meteor, regardless of whether it was a natural space rock or a piece of alien spacecraft – even though we strongly suspect that it wasn’t aliens.”
The team’s findings are due to be presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, on Tuesday, March 12.
