Amir Siraj, a student at Harvard, and professor Avi Loeb have devised a proposal to use a massive magnet to fish out an interplanetary meteorite from the Pacific Ocean’s seafloor. Sound like a scene straight out of a wild sci-fi movie. Isn’t it? However, this is their $1.6 million Galileo Project. Moreover, the duo is quite serious about the potential of the project, which they have claimed is cheaper than sending a spacecraft outside the solar system.
They would use the ferrous characteristics of the meteorite to extract it
Siraj explained their strategy, saying “Most meteorites contain enough iron that they will stick to the type of magnet we plan on using for the ocean expedition. Given its extremely high material strength, it is very likely that the fragments of CNEOS 2014-01-08 are ferromagnetic.”
As per the blueprint of the project, the Galileo Project’s ship would carry a magnetic sledge on a longline winch. The sledge will be lunged 1.7 kilometres into the seabed. Once there, it will attempt to sweep the floor and collect even the tiny fragments of the meteorite, measuring as tiny as 0.004 inches.
An object named CNEOS 2014-01-08 paid a visit to Earth in 2014 and crashed into the Pacific Ocean
It is important to note that in 2014, an object with the name CNEOS 2014-01-08 visited Earth and then fell into the Pacific Ocean. It was not far from the coast of Papua New Guinea. The meteorite is unique since it is considered an interstellar object. That is to say, it originated from another star system.
Both Loeb and Siraj came to the conclusion that the object was interstellar. They used data to calculate the velocity and trajectory of the object. According to them, the object was travelling at a speed of 60 kilometres per second which is much faster than an object that originates in the solar system.
“At the Earth’s distance from the sun, any object travelling faster than about 42 kilometres per second is on an unbounded, hyperbolic escape trajectory relative to the sun. So it [CNEOS 2014-01-08] must have originated from outside of the solar system” said Siraj.
“Finding such a fragment would represent the first contact humanity has ever had with material larger than dust from beyond the solar system,” added Siraj.
