Avi Loeb says analysis of the meteorite shows it originated outside our solar system

In late August, Harvard professor Avi Loeb’s blog announced that he had “great news! For the first time in history, scientists have analyzed material from a meter-sized object that originated from outside the solar system.”

In July, Loeb recovered fragments of a meteorite that fell into the waters off Papua, New Guinea in 2014. A local New York news release describes the find as “metallic marbles, less than a millimeter in diameter,” while Loeb described them as “beautiful balls.” “. Which were colored – blue, brown or gold.”

now USA Today Reports:
Early analysis shows that some pellets from the meteorite’s path contain “very high amounts” of an unprecedented composition of heavy elements. The team’s researchers say that the composition of beryllium, lanthanum and uranium, which is called “BeLaU”, does not match natural ground alloys found on Earth or waste resulting from nuclear explosions. In addition, the composition has not been found in magma oceans on Earth, nor on the Moon, Mars, or other natural bodies in the solar system.

The researchers believe that other elements were lost due to evaporation as IM1 passed through Earth’s atmosphere, leading them to theorize that the globules could originate in a magma ocean on an exoplanet with an iron core outside the solar system.
Okiyan Warrior, a long-time Slashdot reader, wrote that “technical details can be found here, and a readable accounting of the analysis and results can be found on Avi Loeb’s blog.” The precise structure of these domains is now being studied in three separate laboratories, including one at Harvard, Loeb writes.

In July, The New York Times published reactions to Loeb’s claim that it was “most likely an artificial intelligence technology tool.”
“People are tired of hearing Avi Loeb’s wild claims,” said Steve Desch, an astrophysicist at Arizona State University. “It taints good science — it confuses the good science we do with this ridiculous sensationalism and sucks all the oxygen out of the room.” Dr. Desch added that many of his colleagues now refuse to participate in Dr. Loeb’s work in peer review, the process by which scientists evaluate each other’s research to ensure that only high-quality studies are published… “What is the audience?” The vision at Loeb is not The way science works. “They shouldn’t go away thinking about that.”
last week salon He also had some questions for Loeb:

In your book, you describe Carl Sagan’s dictum that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” as a “logical fallacy.” How and why do you think this statement is somehow flawed or a logical fallacy?

It is used as an excuse for people who do not want to deal with an exciting prospect. They don’t look for evidence and say: “Well, we don’t have any evidence…”.

If or when we encounter extraterrestrial life, do you think we will find it or will it find us? Why?

I think we will find it near us because most stars (formed) billions of years before the sun, so it is more likely that some other civilization preceded us because their star, if it is like the sun, has already gone through what we may go through in the future. Go across. We just need to be humble and down to earth, not assume that we are unique and special – that Albert Einstein was the smartest scientist who has ever lived since the Big Bang – and engage in research.

That’s what I’m trying to do, and the resistance is really strange under these circumstances because the people who argue against it have very strong opinions. But if you look at the history of science, you will find that they were often wrong: for example, people (who) believed that the Earth was the center of the universe.
From Loeb’s blog post:
While doing my routine sunrise jog on the deck of the Silver Star, I was asked, “Are you running away from something or toward something?” My answer was: “Both. I am running away from my colleagues who have strong opinions without looking for evidence, and I am running towards a higher intelligence in interstellar space.”