The Search for Interstellar Objects of Technological Origin
With Avi Loeb
Over the past decade, the first four interstellar objects were discovered. They include two interstellar meteors, IM1 and IM2, detected on January 8, 2014 and March 9, 2017, `Oumuamua detected on October 19, 2017, and Borisov detected on August 29, 2019. Among these four, the first three appeared anomalous relative to known solar-system rocks whereas the fourth appeared as a familiar comet. IM1 and IM2 exhibited the highest material strength among all meteorites in the CNEOS catalog of NASA, `Oumuamua exhibited a flat shape and non-gravitational acceleration with no detectable cometary evaporation. In June 2023 we recovered 850 spherules from the Pacific Ocean site IM1. In addition, the Galileo Project Observatories at Harvard, Colorado and Pennsylvania are monitoring millions of objects in the infrared, optical, radio and audio and analyzing their nature with machine-learning software. I will discuss our findings as well as the possible origins of interstellar objects.