The Press Stories
A fireball strikes near Hamburg, In Michigan, 2018 Researchers say it could provide new insights into the history of the solar system.
Fireball – A type of very bright meteorite that can be seen even in daylight – 16 January 2018 The evening sky was seen flying across the sky in several states; The meteorite generated an atmospheric shock equivalent to a 2.0 earthquake.
Walnut-sized pieces were quickly recovered from strawberry and bass lakes by meteor hunters using information from scientists who had been monitoring their path using NASA’s weather radar.
“It’s hard to find a pebble-sized piece in a frozen lake or in an ice blanket,” said Philip Heck, co-author of the report and associate professor at the University of Chicago.
Now Heck and colleagues have released an in-depth report examining three meteorite fragments housed in the Field Museum.
The results reveal that the space rock is a type called H4 chondrite – a relatively rare subspecies of meteorite that is common in the collection.
“[These] Today only 4% of all waterfalls are there, ”said Heck.
Heck said the meteorite contained 2,600 different organic compounds in the initial analysis of the space rock. Heck said these findings add weight to the very important notion that meteorites may play a role in kickstarting life on Earth, even if a larger sequence is found in other meteorites.
“I have personally seen how many organic compounds are still present in this metamorphosis despite its thermal transformation,” Heck said.
But there was other intelligence.
“We found out [this meteorite] It was ejected from its parent asteroid 12 m years ago, ”said Heck, the first evidence of a particular event.
Analyzing the amount of argon in the meteorite formed by radioactive decay sheds light on the history of the asteroid, Heck notes that the element is released when impacts occur. “It simply came to our notice then [parent asteroid] It was created 4.5 billion years ago, ”said Heck. “It was very dull on that asteroid.”
Heck said the Hamburg meteorite fell into the frozen ice, making it relatively unmixed. But to have a truly beautiful model it is necessary to retrieve space rocks directly from asteroids: those who have tried many space missions, NASA spacecraft including Osiris-Rex It is set to return to Earth in 2023.
Dr. Katherine Joy, a meteorologist and lunar scientist at the University of Manchester who was not involved in the report, said space rocks such as the Hamburg meteorite were exciting because they were new extraterrestrial models.
“By looking at minerals and age and chemistry [meteorites] We can look back to understand how its parent parent asteroid body interacted with other asteroids and smaller bodies during the first few million years of the Sun’s formation, ”he said.
Joy said it more UK Fireball Network Is currently looking at the sky for meteorites, and encourages readers to report visitors to the network.
“It will be an exciting day when we get the right type of fireball, and we can go out and find the fallen stone and analyze where it came from,” he said. “It would be absolutely amazing if it came from a completely unique asteroid or part of a larger body like the moon or Mars.”
