Scientists have found fragments of a meteorite that fell near Berlin shortly after midnight January 21st. It is an unusual discovery, of an asteroid identified just before entering the Earth's atmosphere. Only a handful of such events have allowed astronomers trace the origin in the solar system of an incoming rock.
The first analyzes of the fragments have shown something equally strange. The meteorite is a aubritaa class with unknown origin and which constitutes only 80 of the approximately 70 thousand meteorites collected on Earth before the recent event.
“It's really exciting,” said Sara Russell, a meteorite expert at the Natural History Museum in London. “There are very, very few aubritas”.
The asteroid that became a meteorite (or rather meteorite fragments) was initially detected by Krisztián Sárneczky, a Hungarian astronomer, three hours before it collided with the Earth's atmosphere. A network of cameras tracked the incoming rock, 2024 BX1, as it fell near Ribbeck, a town on the outskirts of Berlin.
Estimates suggest that The rock was small, less than a meter. However, it produced a bright flash captured by cameras in many parts of Europe.
As soon as he heard about the meteorite fall, Peter Jenniskens, an astronomer at the SETI Institute in California, bought a plane ticket. He and nearly two dozen students and volunteers scoured the fields around Ribbeck and found more than 20 meteorite fragments.
Researchers at the Natural History Museum in Berlin analyzed the minerals in the fragments. The rocks appeared to be aubrite. It was the first time meteorites of this type had been collected in a tracked fall.
The fountain of the aubritas, which are named after the French town of Aubres near where they were first found, remains a mystery, as their composition does not match other known sources of meteorites in the solar system. Some research has suggested that they are fragments of Mercury, but not all scientists support that origin story.
If the aubritas came directly from Mercury, 2024 BX1 it should have originated in the inner solar system. However, by tracing its trajectory, it appears that the asteroid's initial orbit was much wider and outside Earth's orbit.
“Therefore, this object could not have come to us directly from Mercury,” said Marc Fries, a planetary scientist at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Whatever their origin, the fragments of 2024 BX1 will prove scientifically fascinating.
“I'm sure it will be a priority to find out what its composition is and how it compares to other meteorites,” Russell said.
By: JONATHAN O'CALLAGHAN
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/7131363, IMPORTING DATE: 2024-02-28 16:48:04
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