A fireball that flared over Earth in 2014 was a rock from another star system
A fireball that blazed over Papua New Guinea in 2014 was a fast-moving object from another star system. The object, a small meteorite just 0.45 metres across, slammed into Earth’s atmosphere on 8 January 2014 after travelling through space at more than 130,000 miles per hour, far exceeding the average velocity of meteors that orbit within the Solar System. A 2019 study argued that the meteor’s speed, along with the trajectory of its orbit, proved with 99 per cent certainty that the object had originated far beyond our Solar System – possibly from the deep interior of a planetary system or a star in the thick disc of the Milky Way. But despite the near-certainty, the paper was never peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal, as data needed to verify calculations was classified by the US government.