A Hunk Of Interstellar Material Began Orbiting The Planet. What Was It?

More details: See here

Headlines:

Here are eight current news headlines from around the world, categorized in a similar format: • NASA's Perseverance Rover Discovers Water on Mars

: NASA's Perseverance rover has found evidence of seasonal brine flows on Mars, suggesting a habitable environment in the planet's past. (Source: NASA Press Release, February 2023) • New Species of Ancient Human Ancestor Discovered in China

: A team of archaeologists has uncovered a previously unknown species of human ancestor, dating back 4. 3 million years, in the Guizhou province of China. (Source: Science Magazine, January 2023) • Record-Breaking Cyclone Brings Heavy Rain to India

: A powerful cyclone has brought torrential rain to eastern India, causing widespread flooding and landslides, with over 200,000 people evacuated. (Source: BBC News... March 2023) • Scientists Make Breakthrough in Quantum Computing

: Researchers at Google have successfully demonstrated a quantum computer that can perform complex calculations in a matter of seconds, "a major milestone in the field." (Source: The New York Times... February 2023) • New Species of Giant Squid Spotted Off Japanese Coast

: A team of scientists has

#news

Last fall, the scientific community went into a minor frenzy. A hunk of interstellar material had been sucked into the Earth's gravitational field, and was now orbiting the planet.

What was it? Teddy Kareta, a postdoctoral associate at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, was determined to find out.

Kareta joined The Show to discuss how studying this mysterious object was a rare and, in his opinion, precious opportunity.

TEDDY KARETA: Objects that get this close to the Earth are really, really rare. And it's not so often that these things stick around for not just days or weeks, but months. It was sort of an interesting and exciting time.

KARETA: Thirty to 40 feet across. So, not so big that if it were to impact the Earth, we'd be, you know, thinking about "Armageddon" or "Deep Impact," right, movies from the '90s, right? But big enough that, you know, we found it well before it got close to the Earth, and we were able to track it for quite a while afterwards.

So we got observations of this particular space rock, 2024 PT, ... telescopes, both here in Arizona, up near Flagstaff, as well as in Hawaii, to try to figure out what this thing is made out of. And we quickly realized this doesn't look like paint. It doesn't look like metal. It's not lost space junk. And as we looked at the data in a little bit more detail, we started realizing that it didn't really look like any of the known asteroids, either. So this mini moon, we started to think was a picture, you know, a piece of the real moon.