Seismic and acoustic signals from the 2014 ‘Interstellar Meteor’

Abstract

Summary We conduct a thorough analysis of seismic and acoustic data purported to be from the so-called ‘Interstellar Meteor’ which entered the Earth’s atmosphere off the coast of Papua New Guinea on 2014-01-08. Previous work had suggested that this meteor may have been caused by an alien spacecraft burning up in the atmosphere. We conclude that both previously-reported seismic signals are spurious - one has characteristics suggesting a local vehicular-traffic based origin; whilst the other is statistically indistinguishable from the background noise. As such, previously-reported localisations based on this data are unreliable. Analysis of acoustic data provides a best fit location estimate which is very far (∼170 km) from the reported fireball location. Accordingly, we conclude that material recovered from the seafloor and purported to be from this event is almost certainly unrelated to it, and is likely of more mundane (non-interstellar) origin.