A US Space Command (USSC) report released last week confirmed that the object was from another star system.
The agency concluded that the projectile – which streaked across the sky off the coast of Manus Island, Papua New Guinea – was a meteor.
Prof. Loeb, however, is having none of it. He claimed on Wednesday that the object could have been built by extraterrestrials.
“Our discovery of an interstellar meteor heralds a new research frontier,” the Harvard astronomer wrote in an essay for The Debrief.
“The fundamental question is whether any interstellar meteor might indicate a composition that is unambiguously artificial in origin.
“Better still, perhaps some technological components would survive the impact.”
Prof. Loeb has spent decades studying astronomy and more recently has trained his sights on the possibility that life exists beyond Earth.
His bold claims frequently make headlines and he has faced criticism from others in his field over his outlandish extraterrestrial theories.
Working with a student at Harvard, Prof. Loeb was actually the astronomer who identified the object as interstellar a few years ago.
The pair wrote a paper about it but were instructed not to publish it because they used classified government data for their research.
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