Earlier this year, a Harvard professor claimed that ten tiny spheres found at the bottom of the ocean had come from a meteor known as IM1. The professor, an astrophysicist named Avi Loeb, and some of his colleagues say that the spheres are alien tech and that they had traveled to Earth within the meteor. Now, though, some scientists say it may have just been industrial waste.
The claim that the ten spheres found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean were alien tech first surfaced back in July of this year. The spheres are mostly made of iron, and while it would be intriguing for it to be a batch of alien tech, it’s more likely that they are just industrial waste, a new analysis that has yet to be peer-reviewed claims.
It isn’t much of a secret that many within the scientific community believed Loeb’s claims of alien tech were made far too quickly and without proper analysis. As such, it’s not unexpected to see a counterargument being released. According to this new analysis, the tiny spheres that Loeb considers alien tech are likely more consistent with that of coal ash.
Patricio Gallardo, a research fellow at the University of Chicago, pushed forward the new analysis. Gallardo claims that the chemical composition of the tiny spheres of “alien tech” found at the bottom of the ocean matches that left behind by coal combustion in power plants and steam engines.
However, Loeb isn’t ready to call it quits on the theory that these tiny spheres are actually alien tech. Writing in a Medium post last week, Loeb says that the claims about the spheres being coal ash are “based on unrefereed comments that superficially examined a few elements out of the dozens we analyzed.”
As such, the scientific community is a bit divided on what these spheres are and whether or not they are actually alien in nature. It’s also likely that the area where the spheres were found is not known for having any kind of exposure to coal combustion. However, that doesn’t completely discount the counterargument.
For now, it’s unclear which side is correct. We’ll have to await more analysis and possible peer reviews of Gallardo’s argument to see which seems the most scientifically accurate.
