New research led by Johns Hopkins University strongly suggests that the sound waves previously attributed to a meteor fireball near Papua New Guinea in 2014 were likely caused by the vibrations of a passing truck on a nearby road. This discovery casts doubt on the widely reported belief that materials retrieved from the ocean last year originated from that meteor and were of extraterrestrial origin.
Benjamin Fernando, a planetary seismologist at Johns Hopkins who spearheaded the study, explained, “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.”
Following the entry of a meteor into Earth’s atmosphere above the Western Pacific in January 2014, seismic activity recorded at a monitoring station on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island was associated with the event. In 2023, materials retrieved from the ocean floor near the presumed impact site of the meteor fragments were classified as having “extraterrestrial technological” (alien) characteristics.
However, Fernando argues that this assumption is based on misinterpreted data, suggesting that the meteor actually entered the Earth’s atmosphere at a different location. Furthermore, Fernando’s team found no evidence of seismic waves associated with the meteor.
“The fireball location was actually very far away from where the oceanographic expedition went to retrieve these meteor fragments,” he explained. “Not only did they use the wrong signal, they were looking in the wrong place.”
Leveraging data from monitoring stations in Australia and Palau, specifically designed to detect sound waves emanating from nuclear testing, Fernando’s team pinpointed a more probable meteor entry point, situated over 100 miles away from the originally scrutinized region. Their analysis led them to conclude that the materials retrieved from the ocean floor were diminutive, typical meteorites—or fragments generated by other meteorites impacting the Earth’s surface, intermixed with local contaminants.
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