SPACE — Fragments from an asteroid that exploded over Germany on January 21, 2023 have been confirmed as a rare type of space rock. The meteorite, which was discovered 5 days after falling to Earth, could help explain the origins of the Earth.
As originally reported by Space.com on February 1, scientists suspected that there was something strange about the meteorite fragments from the parent asteroid 2024 BX1. This oddity indicates that they are part of a rare group of asteroids called aubrites. Now, scientists have confirmed this suspicion.
Astronomer from the SETI Institute, Peter Jenniskens, was part of the team that discovered several meteorites. He told Space.com that before the discovery of this meteorite in Germany, there were only 11 examples of aubrite meteorite falls found on Earth.
This extremely rare sample comes from a family that is believed to represent only 1% of the known number of meteorites.
The aubrite meteorite from 2024 BX1 differs from other meteorites in that it has a thin translucent glass crust instead of a thick black glass crust. This meteorite has a gray granite color. This initially makes meteorites difficult to distinguish from standard Earth rocks.
Jenniskens and colleagues at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin carried out the first examination of one of these meteorite pieces with an electron beam microprobe. The results of the examination determined that the meteorite had a mineralogy and chemical composition typical of aubrite-type rocks.
“What’s interesting about this fall is, we have a very good orbit, and the shape of the orbit itself contains clues about where this meteorite’s source region is,” Jenniskens said.
This meteorite likely came from the inner side of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Main belt asteroids like 2024 BX1 formed around the same time as the planets of the solar system, about 4.5 billion years ago.
This asteroid likely formed from material around the ‘baby sun’ that was not used up by planet formation.
That means because they are unaffected by geological processes, they give scientists a look at the building blocks of planets, especially rocky planets in the inner solar system like Mercury, Venus, Mars, and of course Earth.
Jenniskens added that as aubrites, these meteorites have very similar properties to Earth. These similarities include the ratio of water and the ratio of other chemical substances.
This means studying these samples offers the opportunity to investigate the types of material that may have gone into the formation of our planet some 4.5 billion years ago.
“Studying the remnants of asteroid 2024 BX1 may not only be important for understanding Earth’s past but also for safeguarding humanity’s future,” Jenniskens said.
Asteroid 2024 BX1 was first seen by astronomer Krisztián Sárneczky at the Konkoly Observatory in Hungary. The object was then tracked by NASA’s Near-Earth Asteroid Scout and the European Space Agency’s Meerkat Asteroid Guard impact hazard assessment system. Both predicted that the asteroid would indeed hit Earth.
2024-02-07 04:10:00
#Startling #Meteorite #fell #Germany #billions #years #reveal #secrets #solar #system
