PREDNASAJUCI / LECTURER :

Mária Hajduková

(1) Astronomical Institute, Slovak Academy of Sciences,
059 60 Tatranská Lomnica

NAZOV / TITLE :

No evidence for interstellar fireballs in the CNEOS database

ABSTRAKT / ABSTRACT :

The detection of interstellar meteors, especially meteorite-dropping fireballs, would be
transformative, as this would enable direct sampling of material from other stellar systems
on Earth. One such candidate is the fireball observed by U.S. Government sensors on January 8,
2014. It has been claimed that fragments of this fireball have been recovered from the ocean
floor near Papua New Guinea and support an extrasolar origin. Based on its parameters as
reported in the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) catalog, the meteoroid  exhibits
a hyperbolic excess velocity that indicates an interstellar origin; however, the catalog does
not report parameter uncertainties.

To achieve a clear confirmation of the fireball's interstellar origin, we assessed the
underlying error distributions of the catalog data, using statistical analyses and modeling.
We have developed several independent arguments indicating substantial uncertainties in the
velocity and radiant position of the CNEOS events. We have determined that all the hyperbolic
fireballs exhibit significant deviations from the majority of the events in one of their
velocity components, and we have shown that such mismeasurements could produce spurious
parameters.

We have concluded that there is no evidence for the interstellar origin of any of the nominally
hyperbolic fireballs in the CNEOS catalog.  Our analyses demonstrate that the claim of an
interstellar origin for the fireball recorded over Papua New Guinea in 2014 is not supported on
the available data, and thus is not valid. We have also gathered arguments that refute the claim
that the collected spherules from the sea floor originated in the body of the IMC1 fireball.