Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Contact    |    RSS icon Twitter icon Facebook icon  
Unexplained Mysteries
You are viewing: Home > News > Extraterrestrial > News story
Welcome Guest ( Login or Register )  
All ▾
Search Submit

Extraterrestrial

New study casts Avi Loeb's 'alien spherules' claim into further doubt

By T.K. Randall
March 13, 2025 · Comment icon 9 comments

Did these objects even come from a meteorite at all ? Image Credit: Avi Loeb
The Harvard astronomer maintains that these objects are part of a potentially artificially-made interstellar meteorite.
Back in June of 2023, Loeb - who had been on an expedition to search for pieces of a potentially artificially constructed interstellar object that fell somewhere in the Pacific Ocean - published a blog article describing the discovery of mysterious metal spherules with a composition he claimed to be "anomalous" when compared to human-made alloys.

"We found ten spherules," he said. "These are almost perfect spheres, or metallic marbles. When you look at them through a microscope, they look very distinct from the background."

"It has material strength that is tougher than all space rock that were seen before."

Since then, however, scientists have cast a great deal of doubt on whether the spherules are actually what Loeb is claiming they are, with University of Chicago physicist Patricio A Gallardo, for example, dismissing them as "coal fly ash", which he describes as being "a waste product of the combustion of coal in power plants and steam engines."

While Loeb later attempted to argue that his own analysis had ruled out this explanation, something else has now come up to cast doubt on the origin of the objects.

The entire basis for his expedition and recovery operation was the belief that an interstellar meteorite - known as CNEOS 20140108 - had burned up over the South Pacific Ocean in January, 2014.
To determine exactly where the object might have come down, Loeb and his team used seismic data from a station on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea to narrow down the point of impact.

They then used this to guide their undersea search and recovery operations.

Now, however, an international team of researchers headed up by Johns Hopkins University in the US has determined that the seismic signals picked up by the station at the time were probably not from the falling meteorite but were instead most likely to have been a truck passing on a road nearby.

"The signal changed directions over time, exactly matching a road that runs past the seismometer," said planetary seismologist and research leader Benjamin Fernando.

"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."

If this is true, then Loeb wasn't even looking in the right place when he found the spherules.

This makes it more unlikely than ever that he has found pieces of an alien-made interstellar object.

Source: Cosmos Magazine | Comments (9)




Other news and articles
Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #1 Posted by Hazzard 6 days ago
Comment icon #2 Posted by Trelane 6 days ago
Really now, you don't say....
Comment icon #3 Posted by josellama2000 6 days ago
Infamous for selling out his reputation and the credibility of other physicists for money, he could have studied and educated himself, but as the saying goes, but You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
Comment icon #4 Posted by HandsomeGorilla 6 days ago
To think, he actually used to be fairly respected in the field; tenured professor and everything. He threw his entire professional reputation away in just a few years thanks to Oumuamua (spelling?). The entire approach had absolutely no basis in reality and fell down like a house of cards, but Loeb wouldn't budge on the hypothesis. Shame. 
Comment icon #5 Posted by Chaldon 5 days ago
Actually he tried to presume, propose, suggest a possibility, without having any proven facts at hand. In science this approach is always punishable, and he was punished. All the other scientists had the same facts, or absence thereof, but they proposed what should be done using the scientific approach: they used preexisting facts and their conclusions were as expected. But it's like training a new AI model using results produced by its own previous generation without any new data, it leads to degeneration. From time to time some fool must dare to become an outcast just for the sake of inspira... [More]
Comment icon #6 Posted by Doc Socks Junior 24 hours ago
But who was driving that truck, hmmm? Aliens, perhaps, coming to dump their coal ash in our oceans?
Comment icon #7 Posted by Chaldon 7 hours ago
Avi's answer to the new claims: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13185055/Scientists-interstellar-aliens-IM1-meteor-truck-Harvard-Avi-Loeb-unprofessional-lie-Pentagon-data.html Quoting in short:  
Comment icon #8 Posted by Antigonos 5 hours ago
Unfortunately he’s not the only one, either.
Comment icon #9 Posted by HandsomeGorilla 5 hours ago
Just goes to show how much grifting pays. Stephen Greer didn't stop being an ER physician for nothin'.


Please Login or Register to post a comment.


Our new book is out now!
Book cover

The Unexplained Mysteries
Book of Weird News

 AVAILABLE NOW 

Take a walk on the weird side with this compilation of some of the weirdest stories ever to grace the pages of a newspaper.

Click here to learn more

We need your help!
Patreon logo

Support us on Patreon

 BONUS CONTENT 

For less than the cost of a cup of coffee, you can gain access to a wide range of exclusive perks including our popular 'Lost Ghost Stories' series.

Click here to learn more

Top 10 trending mysteries
Recent news and articles