The underwater search for an alien meteor

Deep beneath the Pacific Ocean, in an inky abyss roughly a mile (1.6km) underwater, a curious black-and-silver beast is stirring up mud. With a spotted metallic body and wriggling umbilical of purple rope, to the region's own eccentric deep-sea fauna it might resemble a kind of rectangular stingray. This is the world's first "interstellar hook" - a unique contraption designed and deployed by the controversial Harvard physicist Avi Loeb. It is on the hunt for alien material - and it may have found something.