Astronomers use large magnets to find interstellar meteorites, and for what?all pages

National World News – A group of astronomers say they are preparing to search for a small meteorite from another star system that once hit the Pacific Ocean. They are trying to find interstellar meteorites using large magnets.

The meteorite once hit Earth with an energy equivalent to about 121 tons (110 metric tons) of TNT.

So a Harvard team plans to search for this interstellar meteorite, known as CNEOS, on 2014-01-08.

According to a study published in a preprint journal arXiv In July 2022, CNEOS 2014-01-08 hit Earth for the first time on January 8, 2014.

“The discovery of such debris would represent the first human contact with matter larger than dust outside our solar system,” said study author Amir Siraj, an astrophysicist at Harvard University.

reported from live scienceOn Wednesday (10/8/2022) Siraj identified the origin of the interstellar object in a 2019 study.

Also read: Rare 4.6-billion-year-old meteorite found in horse tracks

However, he only confirmed the US Space Command’s findings in May 2022. He said there were no witnesses associated with the object, an interstellar meteorite that struck Earth.

“It (the meteorite) hit the atmosphere about 100 miles (160 kilometers) off the coast of Papua New Guinea at midnight and contained about 1 percent of the energy of the Hiroshima (nuclear) bomb,” Siraj said.

Meteorite Search Project

Called Galileo, the $1.6 million project by Siraj and Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb aims to lower magnets of similar size. king size bed, 1.3 degrees south latitude, 147.6 degrees east longitude.

This is where the DoD meteorite is located.

“CNEOS 2014-01-08 far exceeds the strength of normal iron meteorite material, which should be easier to recover,” Siraj said.

The strength of the material in these interstellar meteorites refers to how easily an object deforms or breaks under a load.

Also read: Meteorite fall in Central Lampung revealed

Shutterstock/Shutterstock/Marco Aliaksandra Illustration of a comet falling to Earth. 13,000 years ago, fragments of a large comet sparked a fire that swept the Earth, triggering an ice age.

“Most meteorites have enough iron that they will attach to the kind of magnets we plan to use for ocean missions,” Siraj said.

“Given the very high strength of the material, the 2014-01-08 CNEOS fragments are likely to be ferromagnetic,” he continued.

From Papua New Guinea, the ship Project Galileo will use magnetic sleds on long-line winches to transport it 1.7 kilometers to the seafloor for 10 days. The hope is that the magnet will retrieve tiny fragments of meteorites, as small as 0.004 inches in size.

However, it is unclear when astronomers will be able to carry out the mission. Another way to study interstellar objects up close is to send space missions to future objects that pass near Earth, Siraj said.

“But it would be 1,000 times more expensive, about $1 billion,” he explained.

Discovery of the first interstellar meteorite

It said CNEOS 2014-01-08 only measured 0.5 meters and appeared to be the first interstellar object found in the solar system.

Also read: Meteorite Falls But Not a Meteorite Event, How Did It Come From?

CNEOS 2014-01-08 is thought to come from another star system because it is moving at about 60 kilometers per second relative to the sun. It is estimated that this force is too fast to be linked to the sun’s gravitational pull.

Anything moving faster than 42 kilometers per second is on a hyperbolic trajectory over the Earth’s distance from the sun, Siraj said.

This means that CNEOS 2014-01-08 exceeded the bound object’s local speed limit and would not encounter other planets in its path. So it can be detected from outside the solar system.

Previously, an item named “Oumuamua” held the title. The object was discovered during the 2017 Pan-Star Survey, a space rock that entered the solar system at about 92,000 km/h. At the time, Loeb thought it was an alien machine.

This was followed by the discovery of Comet 2I/Borisov, the first interstellar comet discovered in Crimea in 2019 by amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov.

Also read: Hundreds of thousands of meteorites buried in Antarctica, study shows

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