Sound signals initially believed to be from a 2014 meteor fireball were actually vibrations from a truck driving through a nearby road, reveals a new study.
“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,” said Benjamin Fernando, a planetary seismologist at Johns Hopkins who led the research, in a press statement.
A meteor entered the planet’s atmosphere above the Western Pacific in January 2014. Ground vibrations located at a seismic station in Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island at the time were linked to the event. Also, in 2023, materials found at the bottom of the ocean near where fragments of the meteor were thought to have fallen were considered to be of extraterrestrial origin by some, including a Harvard astrophysicist who was part of the team that made the discovery.
But according to the researchers, this theory is based on misinterpreted data and the meteor actually entered Earth’s atmosphere somewhere else. The team found no evidence of seismic waves from the meteor.
“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,” added Fernando.
Fernando and his team used data from stations in Australia and Palau made to detect sound waves from nuclear testing to identify a more likely location for the meteor, more than 200 kilometres away from the area that was “investigated.” They also concluded that the materials recovered from the ocean were tin, ordinary meteorites or particles made by meteorites hitting the planet’s surface.
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First uploaded on: 09-03-2024 at 11:22 IST
Shambhu Kumar is a science communicator, making complex scientific topics accessible to all. His articles explore breakthroughs in various scientific disciplines, from space exploration to cutting-edge research.
