Avi Loeb

It was not related to this meteor.

It may have been a truck passing by.

And I said, well, we relied, going there, we relied on the light emitted from the fireball that was detected by US government satellites, not on the seismometer.

The seismometer was just to say there was an event at the same time.

But we went back and forth across a region of 10 kilometers in size that was localized by the US government satellite data.

Anyway, so... So this isn't settled yet.

This is an ongoing... Well, we now are analyzing isotopes and I hope soon we will have something interesting to report.

Are you going to go back?

Because isotopes cannot be modified.

Abundances of isotopes cannot be modified by chemical process on the surface of a planet like Earth.

If we see an anomaly in the isotope composition, then it's clearly from outside the solar system.

Right, and maybe explain that, because I don't think people understand that all these celestial bodies have their own isotopal signature, yes?

Yeah, because isotopes are just elements that have the same number of protons

uh so they have the same number of electrons in an atom because electrons balance the protons to make it neutral the atom so in terms of the chemical interactions of the atom all you care about is how much how many electrons are bound to it because the chemical interactions are mediated by the electrons and that reflects the number of protons but you can add neutrons

to the nucleus and they would change nothing in terms of the chemical properties.

And so isotopes have different number of neutrons for an element that has a certain number of protons in it or electrons.

And in order to change the number of neutrons, you really need to put

this element through a nuclear furnace.

And that requires tens of millions of degrees.

That can happen in the centers of stars.