Have Fragments of Alien Technology Been Discovered? Alexander Von Humboldt famously observed: “There are three stages of scientific discovery: first people deny it is true; then they deny it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.” Last month, a crew aboard a boat called the Silver Star led by Harvard's intrepid astrophysicist, Avi Loeb, embarked on an expedition to Papua New Guinea with the mission of recovering fragments from a mysterious meteor that had crashed into Earth in 2014.