The First Possible Physical Evidence of Technological Aliens

We cannot travel to other star systems and may not be able to travel there for a hundred years. However, we can find and test interstellar material. We can determine that meteors that were traveling faster than solar system escape velocity came from outside the solar system. NASA has a record of about 300 such interstellar objects that have hit the Earth. If we can track the meteors precisely we can find where they hit and gather samples from other solar systems. This is what Avi Loeb of Harvard and his team have spent $1.5 million have done. The pieces of the interstellar meteor are much tougher than regular iron meteors and contain silicon and titanium. This alloy suggests the possibility that they were manufactured.

However, we do not have to stop at gathering bits of one meteor. The estimated detection rate for interstellar meteors similar to CNEOS is at least ∼ 0.1 every year , resulting in a local density estimate of i ∼ one million per cubic AU or 10^22 per cubic parsec. They estimate 7.59 × 10^34 IM1-like objects bound by the thin disk of the Milky Way. However, if objects with the properties of IM1 were targeted towards habitable zones containing planets, they estimate 7.59 × 10^18 such objects. IM2 had a similar inferred number density to IM1 and a velocity of 40 km s-1 relative to the Local Standard of Rest. They estimate 2.78 × 10^34 IM2-like objects, and our estimate would be decreased to 2.78 × 10^18 if such objects were targeted towards habitable zones.

If there are alien civilizations then there could be vast amounts of technological material that is thrown off as junk, just as we have billions of tons of garbage and pollution. A significant and perhaps majority fraction of interstellar material could be the junk or probes of alien civilizations.

We can search for many of the 300 known interstellar meteor impacts and dedicated telescope detection system can be created so all such objects can be tracked and found.

The First Possible Evidence of Technological Aliens

The Galileo Project expedition to the Pacific Ocean successfully retrieved pieces of the first recognized interstellar meteor, IM1, and brought them back to Harvard College Observatory. More than 50 spherules which lay on the deep ocean floor for nearly a decade. 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. Their discovery opens a new frontier in astronomy, where what lay outside the solar system is studied through a microscope rather than a telescope.

As they scooped the magnets, the most abundant material attached to them was a black powder of volcanic ash. It was everywhere, including the control regions far from IM1’s site. Avi Loeb was initially frustrated by this background to the extent where he titled one of his 34 diary reports: “Where are the spherules of IM1?”.

After a week at sea they used a filter with a mesh size of a third of a millimeter to sift through the tiny volcanic particles and examine the remaining larger particles under a microscope. Shortly thereafter, the team’s geologist Jeff Wynn came running down the stairs to tell me that the team’s analyst Ryan Weed saw through the microscope a beautiful metallic marble of sub-millimeter size and sub-milligram mass.

The composition analysis implied 84% iron, 8% silicon, 4% magnesium and 2% titanium, plus trace elements. I knew immediately that we would find many more spherules.

A typical iron meteorite contains 10% nickel. These spherules contain no nickel.