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German Man Finds Rock From Early Solar System in His Front Yard



 
 
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Old February 19th 20, 08:09 PM posted to alt.astronomy
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Default German Man Finds Rock From Early Solar System in His Front Yard

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German Man Finds Rock From Early Solar System in His Front Yard

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Ryan F. Mandelbaum
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METEORITES

The surface of the Flensburg meteorite
Photo: WWU - Markus Patzek

Scientists have released their initial analysis of a meteorite that fell
over Europe last September. They report that the rock, the remnant of a
daytime bolide that impacted Earth with an energy of 0.48 kilotons of
TNT (around this much), is a carbonaceous chondrite—the kind of meteor
that contains material from the earliest epoch of the solar system.

On September 12, 2019, more than 500 people across the Netherlands,
Germany, Belgium, Denmark, and the UK reported seeing a flash of light
across the sky in broad daylight. The next day, a man named Erik
Due-Hansen in Flensburg, Germany stumbled upon a smooth, black,
24.5-gram meteorite chunk on his front lawn and reached out to
authorities, who brought the rock to the Institut für Planetologie at
Münster University in Germany, where professor Addi Bischoff and PhD
student Markus Patzek analyzed the specimen, now nicknamed Flensburg.

The pair’s scanning electron microscope analysis revealed that the
meteorite contains 0.05- to 1-millimeter spheres called chondrules with
abundant levels of minerals called phyllosilicates and carbonates,
minerals that require water to form. They classified the meteorite as a
a carbonaceous chondrite—a kind of ancient rock that could be made up of
the same material as the planetesimals that formed and delivered water
to early Earth.

Finds like these are exciting for a lot of reasons; they represent only
3 percent of the meteorites found on Earth but are among the most
important to scientists, since they contain a record of the material
that could have existed in the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.
Perhaps the most famous carbonaceous chondrite is the 220-pound
Murchison meteorite, which contains surprising molecules like amino
acids and sugars.

The Flensburg meteorite.
The Flensburg meteorite.
Photo: WWU - Markus Patzek
Scientists can combine information from these carbonaceous chondrites
with observations gleaned from rocks in outer space. When the Hayabusa2
spacecraft’s MASCOT lander tumbled into a hole on the asteroid Ryugu,
its cameras revealed that the surface of this body looked a whole lot
like a carbonaceous chondrite itself. Rocks like the Flensburg asteroid
likely looked similar to asteroids like Ryugu before entering Earth’s
atmosphere—though there’s work left to be done to fully understand the
link between meteorites on Earth and the kinds of planetary bodies that
produced them.

You can find out more on the Meteoritical Bulletin’s Searchable Database
(where you can also do cool things like see where the closest meteorite
found near your house is). But mainly, I just think it’s neat to learn
the full story behind a fireball.

Ryan F. Mandelbaum
Senior writer covering physics / Founder of Birdmodo

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