It's obvious their study did not uncover anything anamalous or presumably Loeb would have happily discussed these findings. Instead the interview is just standard "we need to look" interview he does all the time.
That's an interesting observation.
I'm wondering if Avi Loeb is gently trying to reduce his perceived enthusiasm for ETI hypotheses
(the following might belong in
A Debunk of Avi Loeb's "Alien Spherules" claims, but I felt the above might make it relevant here):
Avi Loeb's most recent paper informed by his expedition to the waters off Papua New Guinea in order to retrieve spherules that might have come from the CNEOS 2014-01-08 bolide has just been published:
Chemical classification of spherules recovered from the Pacific Ocean site of the CNEOS 2014-01-08 (IM1) bolide,
Loeb, A., Jacobsen, S.B., Tagle, R. et al.,
Chemical Geology vol. 670, 20 December 2024-
-well; it's
going to be published 20 December 2024, but the complete text appears to be on Elsevier (including appendices of data, which is commendable),
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0009254124004959
Interest in CNEOS 2014-01-08 (also called IM1, "Interstellar Meteorite 1" by some) is largely because its
possible speed and trajectory
might indicate origins outside of the Solar System, although this is still debated, see Wikipedia, "CNEOS 2014-01-08"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNEOS_2014-01-08. Avi Loeb is confident that there was an extrasolar impactor.
A 13 March 2024 article by Ethan Slegel on the
Big Think website, "The humiliating truth behind Harvard astronomer's "alien" spherules",
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/truth-harvard-astronomer-alien-spherules/, is a summary of some of the criticism of Loeb's position. Loeb raised the possibility of any debris not only being extrasolar, but being of technological origin, and Slegel refers to this in increasingly acerbic terms:
External Quote:
Problem #3: Loeb's claim that the presence of elements rarely found in common meteorites, like Beryllium, Lanthanum, and Uranium, as well as other rare elements, indicate not only an origin beyond our own Solar System, but a technological origin for these samples... ...Loeb had previously claimed that the Beryllium, Lanthanum, and Uranium (BeLaU, for short) compositions of these objects, because those elements are not found in normal meteorites, are instead evidence that these spherules are not just from outside of our Solar System, but must be an indicator of alien technology. As is so often the case in crackpot circles, one extraordinary claim begets another...
Avi Loeb's speculations were greeted with enthusiasm by UFO enthusiasts. Slegel tells us that Patricio Gallardo had found that coal ash has a similar composition to Loeb's spherules, providing a link to Gallardo's paper
Anthropogenic Coal Ash as a Contaminant in a Micro-meteoritic Underwater Search, Gallardo, P. A.,
Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society 7 (10), 2023
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/ad03f9
Loeb et al.'s December 2024 paper presents evidence for isotopic composition of some spherules that he believes differ significantly from known solar system norms.
However, unlike some of his earlier speculation about intelligent ET origins for the spherules, Avi proposes a different mechanism for extrasolar origins of CNEOS 2014-01-08, citing a paper he co-authored,
Interstellar meteors from the tidal disruption of rocky planets on eccentric orbits around M dwarfs, Loeb, A., MacLeod, M.,
Astronomy & Astrophysics vol. 686, June 2024, abstract viewable at
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/abs/2024/06/aa49250-24/aa49250-24.html
External Quote:
Results
We compare these properties [of M dwarf system ejecta of debris from tidally disrupted rocky planets, John J.] to those of the candidate interstellar meteoroid CNEOS-2014-01-08 (IM1). IM1's approximately 60 km s−1 excess speed relative to the local standard of rest is naturally reproduced by the unbound debris of the disruption of an Earth-like planet around an M dwarf star. We suggest that such an encounter might explain the interstellar kinematics of IM1, and its unusual composition, especially if it originated in the fastest-expelled crust of a differentiated rocky planet.
Loeb's proposed explanation for the possible interstellar origins of CNEOS-2014-01-08, and the atypical isotopic composition of spherules he believes might have come from that object, are still speculative (and I'd guess controversial), but it might help us understand the possible origins of extrasolar materials on Earth if they are found, maybe including some of Avi's spherules.
But there appears to be little awareness from UFO groups/ enthusiasts that Avi Loeb seems to be de-emphasizing an ETI origin.