The first known interstellar object to land on Earth was a meteor that crashed near Papua New Guinea in 2014. However, its origin remained unknown for years because the data collected by the Department of Defense sensors was classified, reports vice.com
In 2019, two Harvard researchers claimed that they had identified the meteor as an extrasolar visitor, but they could not access the DoD data to confirm their finding.
In 2022, U.S. Space Command finally verified their discovery using its own chief scientist and DoD data. But this raised more questions about why the government had withheld such important information from the public and the scientific community.
The question arises, maybe it was not a meteor at all?
Motherboard filed a Freedom of Information Act request with various federal agencies to find out more about this cover-up.
One of them was directed to the Department of Energy, which oversees Los Alamos National Laboratory, a secretive nuclear weapons facility that also operates DoD sensors.
The request asked for emails from two Los Alamos scientists mentioning asteroid, meteor, or debris. Motherboard requested expedited processing due to the public interest in learning about alien objects entering our solar system.
However, the request has been met with repeated delays and obstacles from both the Department of Energy and Los Alamos National Laboratory. The estimated completion date has been pushed back several times, and the request has been sent back to Los Alamos for “additional information”.
It is unclear what kind of difficulties are preventing them from releasing records on this matter.
This situation suggests that there may be more secrets and mysteries surrounding the interstellar meteor than what has been revealed so far.
What did Los Alamos know about it? Why did they not share it with other researchers? What else are they hiding? These are some of the questions that Motherboard hopes to answer with its FOIA request.