Signals believed to be from aliens outside Solar System came from trucks
Technology
Scientists said that they were curious to know about signals since they kept changing directions
(Web Desk) - The search for extraterrestrials has taken several turns and there have been hundreds of reports of strange sound forms or signals with claims of being alien. One such event happened in 2014.
The meteor, from which the signal was believed to have come, entered Earth's atmosphere in January 2014 over the Western Pacific.
At the time seismometers at a seismic station in Papua New Guinea's Manus Island picked up strange vibrations.
Nearly a decade later, materials at the bottom of the ocean near where the meteor fragments were thought to have fallen were identified and confirmed to have alien origins.
The sound waves at the time were believed to have been from the meteor fireball. But, there was a twist in the tale.
A new research has confirmed it was entirely vibrations made by trucks along a nearby road.
Scientists said that they were curious to know about the signals since they kept changing directions over time.
A new study led by Johns Hopkins University confirms that the change in direction exactly matches 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,” Benjamin Fernando, a planetary seismologist at Johns Hopkins, said.
The new findings further raise questions on the validity of the material recovered from the ocean to be of alien origin. The team claims that the supposition relies on misinterpreted data and the meteor entered the atmosphere somewhere else.
Using data from monitoring stations in Australia and Palau, intended for detecting nuclear test sound waves, Fernando's research team pinpointed a probable location for the meteor, situated over 100 kilometers from the initially explored area.
Contrary to earlier assumptions, their investigation revealed that the materials retrieved from the ocean floor were minute, typical meteorites or particles resulting from other celestial bodies colliding with Earth, combined with terrestrial contaminants.
Fernando emphasised the complete disconnect between the sea floor findings and the meteor, dismissing any association, whether it be a natural space rock or a fragment of an extraterrestrial craft, despite suspicions to the contrary.
“The fireball location was 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,” Benjamin added.
