{"id":18327,"date":"2019-04-17T18:29:16","date_gmt":"2019-04-17T16:29:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmaka.de\/?p=18327"},"modified":"2022-04-19T12:01:47","modified_gmt":"2022-04-19T10:01:47","slug":"discovery-of-a-meteor-of-interstellar-origin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/?p=18327","title":{"rendered":"Discovery of a Meteor of Interstellar Origin<span class=\"badge-status\" style=\"background:#787878\">OPEN ACCESS \/ updated draft 19 April 2022<\/span>&nbsp;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Update (19 April 2022): draft replaced as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Discovery of a Meteor of Interstellar Origin<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Amir Siraj, Abraham Loeb<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Draft version: April 19, 2022, submitted to ApJL<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/pdf\/1904.07224.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>PDF (OPEN ACCESS)<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"justify-text\">&#8220;The earliest confirmed interstellar object, \u2018Oumuamua, was discovered in the Solar System by Pan-STARRS in 2017, allowing for a calibration of the abundance of interstellar objects of its size \u223c 100 m. This was followed by the discovery of Borisov, which allowed for a similar calibration of its size \u223c0.4\u22121 km. One would expect a much higher abundance of significantly smaller interstellar objects, with some of them colliding with Earth frequently enough to be noticeable. Based on the CNEOS catalog of bolide events, we identify the \u223c 0.45m meteor detected at 2014-01-08 17:05:34 UTC as originating from an unbound hyperbolic orbit with 99.999% confidence. The U.S. Department of Defense has since verified that \u201cthe velocity estimate reported to NASA is sufficiently accurate to indicate an interstellar trajectory.\u201d We infer that the meteor had an asymptotic speed of v\u221e \u223c 42.1 \u00b1 5.5 km s\u22121 outside of the solar system. Its origin is approximately towards R.A. 49.4 \u00b1 4.1\u25e6 and declination 11.2 \u00b1 1.8\u25e6, implying that its initial velocity vector was 58 \u00b1 6 km s\u22121 away from the velocity of the Local Standard of Rest (LSR). Its high LSR speed implies a possible origin from the deep interior of a planetary system or a star in the thick disk of the Milky Way galaxy. The local number density of its population is 106+0.75\/\u22121.5 AU\u22123 or 9 \u00d7 1021+0.75\/\u22121.5 pc\u22123 (necessitating 0.2 \u2013 20 Earth masses of material to be ejected per local star). We show that the detections of CNEOS 2014-01-08, \u2018Oumuamua, and Borisov collectively imply that the differential size distribution in good agreement with a collisional distribution, with a power-law slope is q \u223c 3.6 \u00b1 0.5, where the quoted uncertainty corresponds to 2\u03c3. We then consider the possibility of analyzing interstellar meteor compositions based on spectroscopy of their gaseous debris as they burn up in the Earth\u2019s atmosphere. We propose a strategy for determining the orbits and chemical compositions of interstellar meteors, using a network of \u223c 600 all-sky camera systems to track and conduct remote spectroscopy on meteors larger than \u223c 5cm once every few years. It should also be possible to retrieve meteorites from the impact sites, providing the first samples of materials from other planetary systems.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Original draft (16 April 2019):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Discovery of a Meteor of Interstellar Origin<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Amir Siraj, Abraham Loeb <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/pdf\/1904.07224\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>PDF (OPEN ACCESS)<\/strong><\/a> The original draft (16 April 2019) is still available <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20190416222436\/https:\/\/arxiv.org\/pdf\/1904.07224.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>HERE<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\nsubmitted to <em>The Astrophysical Journal Letters<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"justify-text\">&#8220;The first interstellar object, `Oumuamua, was discovered in the Solar System by Pan-STARRS in 2017, allowing for a calibration of the abundance of interstellar objects of its size \u223c100 m. One would expect a much higher abundance of smaller interstellar objects, with some of them colliding with Earth frequently enough to be noticeable. Based on the CNEOS catalog of bolide events, we identify the \u223c0.45m meteor detected at 2014-01-08 17:05:34 UTC as originating from an unbound hyperbolic orbit with an asymptotic speed of v\u221e\u223c43.8kms\u22121 outside of the solar system. Its origin is approximately towards R.A. 3h24m and declination +10.4\u2218, implying that its initial velocity vector was \u223c60kms\u22121 away from the velocity of the Local Standard of Rest (LSR). Its high LSR speed implies a possible origin from the deep interior of a planetary system or a star in the thick disk of the Milky Way galaxy. The local number density of its population is 106+0.75\u22121.5AU\u22123 or 9\u00d71021+0.75\u22121.5pc\u22123 (necessitating 0.2 &#8211; 20 Earth masses of material to be ejected per local star). This discovery enables a new method for studying the composition of interstellar objects, based on spectroscopy of their gaseous debris as they burn up in the Earth&#8217;s atmosphere. &#8220;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Update (19 April 2022): draft replaced as: Discovery of a Meteor of Interstellar Origin Amir Siraj, Abraham Loeb Draft version: April 19, 2022, submitted to ApJL PDF (OPEN ACCESS) &#8220;The earliest confirmed interstellar object, \u2018Oumuamua,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[98,382],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18327"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18327"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30491,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18327\/revisions\/30491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}