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just as we've hit record the u.s space

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command confirmed to the nasa

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directorship that an interstellar meteor

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discovered by a student of yours and

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yourself amir siraj i think i'm saying

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the name correctly in 2019 is indeed of

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interstellar origin at the detection i

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believe happened in 2014 which predates

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umuah by more than three years so this

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object this meteor will now be

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recognized as the first interstellar

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object ever discovered can you tell us

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just a little bit about that and then i

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do have a question on the back of that

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as well as pertains to the equipment

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yeah so this

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discovery is very exciting for a number

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of reasons first of all

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i was

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invited to an interview in march 2019 uh

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about

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a meteor that

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was uh recognized

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around that time a few months earlier

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that was quite powerful and i read a

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little about it before the interview so

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that i'll be knowledgeable and then

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uh while reading background on meteors i

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realized well there is actually a

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catalog of meteors

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that the us government has data on and

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so then i approached my student and i

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said look why don't you check this

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catalog and see if any of the

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velocities reporter reported for these

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meteors measured by the us government

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indicate that any of these objects came

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from outside the solar system because if

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they move very fast relative to earth

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you know they might have originated from

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far away and so um

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he

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undergraduate at harvard college and so

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he went to the catalogue and looked at

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the fastest object reported relative to

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earth and

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turned out that this object was on a

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head-on collision the earth moves in

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some direction and this object came

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exactly from the opposite direction

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so it's not

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it's not necessarily unbound to the sun

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it could it

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it's probably bound to the sun it didn't

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come from outside the source so then he

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went to the second object in the list

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and he found that this object actually

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uh had a speed of 40 kilometers per

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second outside the solar system if you

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uh

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subtract off the the motion of the earth

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and then uh

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calculate its own motion

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relative to the sun and

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and go back in time you you realize that

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he actually was very fast even outside

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the solar system so

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that was

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very exciting because it indicated that

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this object is

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interstellar

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so we wrote a a

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scientific paper about it saying well

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this object was discovered uh on january

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8 2014 at the

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five in the afternoon

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and it's uh 3.75 years before um

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and it was found

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north of

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manus island off the coast of papua new

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guinea uh and then we

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you know described the calculation and

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argued that it's the first interstellar

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object that

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was detected on earth and it was just

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missed even though it was in this

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catalog nobody actually

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wrote a paper saying this is an interest

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of interstellar origin so we submitted

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the paper in 2019

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march 2018 after my interview and

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within a few days from that then

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submitted it to the astrophysical

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journal and then we got the referee

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report back saying

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you know in that catalogue of the

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government there are no error bars

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we don't trust the government

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it's most likely this object

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has large uncertainties in the

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measurement

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and i thought to myself

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that makes no sense because the us

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government is after ballistic missiles

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right and they need to know whether they

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land on boston or new york they need

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very high precision so if you are

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telling me that the error budget should

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be huge

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at a level that would make this object

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bound to the sun that means the

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government doesn't know what they're

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doing they can't really predict what

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ballistic missiles uh

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are you know which target that they're

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moving towards and

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i i cannot believe that you know that

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doesn't make sense so so we actually at

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the time i was sharing the board on

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physics and astronomy of the national

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academies and one of the members there

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was from los alamos so

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behind the fence of national security so

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i approached him and said

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could you please give us assurance that

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the error budget is indeed small

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so that this object is definitely of

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interstellar origin and he went back and

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discussed it

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uh and then we got an email saying yes

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we can assure you that it's interesting

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so then we went back to the referee of

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the astrophysical journal and said look

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we got this assurance

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you should accept the paper for

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publication and the referee said no i

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don't believe

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the us government this is not a public

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announcement the paper is rejected

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and you can ask yourself why

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was this referee or referees there were

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several of them so hostile

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my answer is

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because they're quote unquote experts

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they worked in this field for decades

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they do not like the idea that someone

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else that is new to their field makes a

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discovery so they would try to find any

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reason to dispute that discovery even if

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it says the us government doesn't know

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what they're doing

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so

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the paper was rejected

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and you know just

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uh

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set on on our desk for

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three years now so in the meantime

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uh we of of course informed people uh

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that assured us that this is

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interstellar and said look we need a

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more

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uh official announcement

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and gladly after three years you can see

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how long it takes to declassify error

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bars they didn't actually declassify the

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error bar

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they just made a public announcement

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from the department of defense the

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united states space command

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and the the letter is available for

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anyone to see

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it was sent to the directorate of fen of

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nasa under the leadership of thomas

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zurbuchen who is responsible for all the

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science done at nasa

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and in that letter they explicitly say

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that

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the

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amir siraj and myself

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is indeed a discovery of an object from

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an interstellar origin

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and

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percent confidence

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99.999

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so i ask you

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why would there free disbelieve

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the original report

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and the original email we had when the

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government is at the

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99.999 percent confident and obviously

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they would be because they have to know

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what they are doing in terms of

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monitoring the motion of objects

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you know in the sky

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right yeah so anyway this is the bottom

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line as of today this letter was

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released

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and now we know there was an

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interstellar

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uh object discovered before omua mua

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okay that's point number one

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the second point uh that it is

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significant is because this is a meteor

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what that means is it came it collided

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with the earth okay

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so

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of course it burned in

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in the atmosphere and there was a

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fireball and that's how

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it was detected from the fireball from

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the heat

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as a result of it rubbing against the

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air

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but

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something you know some relic of it may

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have landed

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in the ocean

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so we can put our hands on it

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so there are two possibilities either

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this interstellar object

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is natural you know like people

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suggested about a mua mua maybe it's a

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nitrogen iceberg maybe it's a hydrogen

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iceberg you know maybe it's a dust but

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well clearly this one is not a dust

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bunny because a dust bunny would not

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burn up like a meteor

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okay so here is an interstellar object

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that is not a dust bunny

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and you know if any piece of it landed

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in the ocean we can put our hands on it

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which we cannot do with respect to muah

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so that's the second reason why it's