Proof of extraterrestrial life has been discovered at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, according to a Harvard University astrophysicist.
During a two-week voyage to Papua New Guinea, a crew led by Harvard University astrophysicist Avi Loeb recovered dozens of tiny fragments from an unusual meteor that crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 2014.
The fragments, also described as tiny spheres, are made up of a metallic substance that does not exist in our solar system, Loeb said. Last year, U.S. Space Command confirmed the extraterrestrial object – dubbed interstellar meteor, IM1 – was originally from a different solar system.
“Their discovery opens a new frontier in astronomy, where what lay outside the solar system is studied through a microscope rather than a telescope,” said Loeb, according to USA Today.
It is unclear whether the spheres are natural or technological. Additional testing is being conducted to determine the fragments’ makeup.
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Loeb said the meteor was roughly the size of a basketball when it entered the Earth’s atmosphere.
While the meteor was too small to be detected by telescopes, its crash into the western Pacific Ocean created a bright fireball that was caught on U.S. government sensors, he added.
During the $1.5 million expedition, Loeb’s crew examined more than 108 miles of the ocean floor, combing it with magnets to recover the spheres.
“These sub-millimeter-sized spheres, which appear under a microscope as beautiful metallic marbles, were concentrated along the expected path of IM1 — about 85 kilometers off the coast of Manus Island in Papua New Guinea,” Loeb wrote in an article published on Medium.com. “That 83% of the matter in the universe is apparently composed of dark matter which was not found yet in the solar system should teach us modesty in forecasting the nature of interstellar objects.”
