Morphological Comparison of Debris Recovered Searching for the 2018 Meteorite Fall into the Pacific with Those Recovered From the Purportedly Interstellar 2014 Fall
On 08 Jan 2014 a bolide was detected by US DoD sensors over the Pacific north of Papua New Guinea. A claim was subsequently made that this event arose from a meteoroid of interstellar origin based on fireball parameters, although that interpretation has been challenged. A seagoing expedition recovered material from the seafloor at a location calculated to be the fall site, and that material included small melted spherules. The spherules were claimed to be of extrasolar origin based on appearance and composition. A recent publication finds a favorable composition match between the retrieved spherules and coal ash, a ubiquitous contaminant on Earth’s surface and seafloor.