meteorite | Common News Update

Aug302020 by adminNo Comments

Meteorite study suggests Earth has always been wet

Science

Aug. 28 (UPI) -- For decades, planetary scientists have been operating under the assumption that Earth was born dry, its water arriving only later, delivered via comets and asteroids. But in a new study, published Friday in the journal Science, researchers argue Earth was always wet, formed by waterlogged building blocks. The proof: a collection of meteorites called enstatite chondrites. Advertisement "[Enstatite chondrites] are rocky meteorites made mostly of silicate, metal and sulfides," lead study author Laurette Piani told UPI in an email. "They have a very peculiar mineralogy with phases such as calcium- or magnesium-sulfides, nitrides, and silicide that are almost nonexistent on Earth, although their isotope compositions of many elements indicate a clear link with the Earth buildin...

Jul272020 by adminNo Comments

Nasa Mars rover: Meteorite to head home to Red Planet

Science

A small chunk of Mars will be heading home when the US space agency launches its latest rover mission on Thursday. Nasa's Perseverance robot will carry with it a meteorite that originated on the Red Planet and which, until now, has been lodged in the collection of London's Natural History Museum (NHM). The rock's known properties will act as a calibration target to benchmark the workings of a rover instrument.It will give added confidence to any discoveries the robot might make.This will be particularly important if Perseverance stumbles across something that hints at the presence of past life on the planet - one of the mission's great quests."This little rock's got quite a life story," explained Prof Caroline Smith, head of Eart...

May112020 by adminNo Comments

Violent meteorite impacts forged parts of the lunar crust

Science

May 11 (UPI) -- Parts of the moon's crust were forged by large and violent meteorite impacts, according to new research published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy. Analysis of a lunar rock, brought home by astronauts on NASA's 1972 Apollo 17 mission, revealed the presence of minerals that can only form at temperatures greater than 4,300 degrees Fahrenheit -- the kind of temperatures generated by large impact events. Researchers found evidence of a specific phase of cubic zirconia inside the lunar rock, a phase only produced at high temperatures. The mineral has since reverted to baddeleyite, but the signature of its cubic zirconia phase remains imprinted in the structure of the baddeleyite crystals. Scientists were able to date the baddeleyite to 4.3 billion years ago, which sugges...

Dec62019 by adminNo Comments

US meteorite adds to origins mystery

Science

In January 2018, a falling meteorite created a bright fireball that arced over the outskirts of Detroit, Michigan, followed by loud sonic booms. The visitor not only dropped a slew of meteorites over the snow-covered ground, it also provided information about its extra-terrestrial source. Although tens of thousands of meteorites have been recovered by humans, scientists have only been able to trace the orbits of a small number. Most of these have been calculated in the last decade. Scientists can use information about how the meteorite burned through Earth's atmosphere to calculate how the rocky object moved through space before it transformed into a fireball. Researchers cannot trace the specific path of an object back through...

Nov302019 by adminNo Comments

Antarctica: Metal meteorite quest set to get under way

Science

Media playback is unsupported on your device A team of British scientists has arrived in the Antarctic to try to find the continent's "missing meteorites".The group, from the University of Manchester, will spend six weeks scouring a remote region for lumps of iron that have fallen from the sky.These pieces of metal represent the shattered remains of small planet-like objects that were destroyed in the early years of the Solar System.Iron meteorites are rare, however, especially in Antarctica.Less than 1% of all the space rocks recovered in searches on the continent are of the metal type, compared with about 5% elsewhere in the world.But the Manchester researchers believe they know the reason for this statistical deficit. Their modelling work s...