In 2019, a cigar-shaped object known as 'Oumuamua was spotted zipping through the inner solar system and, peculiarly, speeding up while making its exit, seemingly in defiance of the physics of a quotidian asteroid. There are plenty of mundane hypotheses about why 'Oumuamua sped up — outgassing, or the expulsion of previously trapped gas, is among the most popular. Yet Harvard astronomy professor Dr. Avi Loeb has penned numerous papers and a book arguing that it could have been caused by a light sail spacecraft — one driven by a form of interstellar propulsion — created by an alien civilization.
Now, Loeb has a new provocative hypothesis, one that relates to a mysterious meteoroid that became known to Earth-dwellers several years before 'Oumuamua. Given a decisively less memorable name, CNEOS 2014-01-08, it is believed to have been only two feet long when it crashed into Earth at over 100,000 mph in 2014, after which it exploded into tiny fragments that landed in the South Pacific Ocean. Astronomers believe it may very well be the first human-observed interstellar object of its size to strike Earth — and, for that reason, CNEOS 2014-01-08 has piqued the attention of the astronomy community.
