Inside the hunt for alien life on Earth’s ocean beds where magnets are used to trawl for evidence from other stars

That would make it the first interstellar object to make contact with the earth and predate "Oumuamua" by three years, Loeb said.

Oumuamua, a mysterious, 100-kilometer cigar or pancake-shaped object, slingshot past the sun in 2017 and was originally believed to be the first interstellar object to get close to Earth.

Loeb and Siraj argued in their paper that the much smaller object (about 0.45 meters) that crashed off Papa New Guinea was actually the first interstellar object to collide with earth.

Their paper was greeted rudely by "ridicule" from the scientific community and social media, Loeb said.

Their findings were "doubted because the uncertainties in the velocity measurements were classified," he said.

That changed last month when the US Space Force's Space Operations Command their paper to NASA, which was released on April 6.

"This is of great importance," Loeb said, "because the meteor fragments are available on the ocean floor near Papa New Guinea."

"The fact that the US government is willing to support the progress of science and advance our scientific knowledge is very encouraging."

Loeb, who started the  to find out if there are any extraterrestrial objects of technological origin, is planning the expedition to the crash site.

"This would be our first chance of putting our hands on materials from a large object, a meteor in size, that came from far away outside the solar system," Loeb said.

"The question is is it natural in origin? Is it some unusual, very tough rock because we know it's tougher than iron-based on the fireball it created in the lower part of the atmosphere?

"Or is it artificial in origin? Imagine the new horizons."

Loeb said he's hoping to get to Papa New Guinea "ASAP."

They're in the process of securing equipment, boats, and permits, among other preparations.

He believes they should be ready to go as early this Fall but no later than next summer.

They would pick up the pieces with a magnet that rolls back and forth at the bottom of the sea "like a lawnmower," he said.

"Once collected, we could place our hands around sizeable chunks of interstellar matter and examine its composition and nature," Loeb wrote in one of his reports published on Medium.

"The ocean on site is a couple of kilometers deep, and the impact region is uncertain to within 10 kilometers. But an expedition to explore this region for meteor fragments is feasible and we are currently engaged in designing it."