According to Boston Public Radio, Avi Loeb, a Harvard professor known for his enthusiastic hunting of UFOs, claims he has new evidence suggesting that meteor fragments recovered from the ocean floor could be of extraterrestrial origin.
This statement serves as a rebuttal to critics who claim that the origins of these fragments are of a more conventional nature.
“It raises the possibility that it was a Voyager-like meteor, artificially created by another civilization,” says Loeb the station said on Monday, referring to a real pair of probes that NASA sent screaming out of the solar system in the 1970s.
Although Avi Loeb gained fame for his controversial theories surrounding the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua, which crossed our solar system in 2017, his latest research focuses on another celestial anomaly. Unlike ‘Oumuamua, this interstellar oddity, dubbed IM1, made its way to Earth – albeit not in one piece.
Nearly a decade ago, IM1 plunged into the Pacific Ocean near Papua New Guinea, initially escaping attention until Loeb spearheaded efforts in 2022 that confirmed it was the first interstellar object known to be on Earth fallen.
In a single-minded pursuit, the astrophysicist led an expedition last year to scour the ocean floor for remnants of the object. According to his claims, he discovered spherical metal fragments, or “spheres,” which he believes could indicate that IM1 could be a form of alien technology.
These findings, described in a paper published in October, were met with skepticism. Some scientists argued that the globules could be the result of fallout from human nuclear testing or even just coal ash.
Undeterred, Loeb claimed in an interview with Boston Public Radio that he has released new findings to counter the skeptics. In his pre-print article, he concludes that the chemical composition of some globules is “different from that of any known material from the solar system.”
“What we did was compare 55 elements from the periodic table in coal ash with the special beads we found,” he said. “And it’s obviously very different.”
“It’s not based on opinions,” he added. “And if you are not part of this scientific process and are jealous of the attention it gets, you can of course express a lot of criticism.”
Loeb believes our best chance of finding aliens remains up in the sky. In particular, he warns that his scientific colleagues, often fixated on the furthest reaches of the cosmos, should not overlook what lies in our solar system.
“The best approach to figuring this out is to do the scientific work of building observatories that look out and check what these objects are,” he told Boston Public Radio. “And if it’s birds, or planes, or Chinese balloons, so be it.”
“But we have to figure it out, it’s our civic duty as scientists,” he added.
