Scientists have solved the mystery of an 'alien signal' coming from 'meteor fireball'

The idea of a meteor strike producing ‘alien signals’ sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie, but research led by academics from John Hopkins University in Maryland has cast doubt on assertions that a January 2014 “meteor fireball” near Papua New Guinea produced information of alien origin.

In 2023, Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb led a project which retrieved metallic spheres from the seafloor in the Pacific Ocean near the aforementioned site, and concluded the ‘spherules’ contained “extremely high” levels of beryllium, lanthanum and uranium in a “never-seen-before ‘BeLaU’ composition”.

“These spherules also exhibit iron isotope ratios unlike those found on Earth, the Moon and Mars, altogether implying an interstellar origin,” Harvard said in a August 2023 press release.

However, Benjamin Fernando, a planetary seismologist at John Hopkins, argued that this claim “relies on misinterpreted data”, and that the meteor in question “actually entered the atmosphere somewhere else”.

They also found no evidence of seismic waves from said meteor.

Fernando 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.

"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.”

And it turns out what Fernando suggests may be the signals is something a little less futuristic and exciting.

“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."

Awkward.

Loeb has since defended his previous claims following the John Hopkins research, though, directing Cosmos Magazine to a preprint paper from him which says “the expedition to retrieve the materials … was not dictated by the [seismic] data studied by Fernando et al. (2024)”.

Why not read…

• 'Thriving ecosystem' of creatures found in a previously unseen seafloor
• Scientists make 'huge' $540 billion discovery at the bottom of a giant lake

Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.