by The Winchcombe meteorite, which fell to the ground in Gloucestershire in the UK after blazing a path through the night sky on February 28, 2021which came from an asteroid that had been heavily modified by water as well as broken apart and reformed many times.
That’s the conclusion of a detailed analysis of the meteorite, fragments of which were found scattered in fields near the village of Winchcombe, and even on one family’s driveway. This was the first meteorite fall found in the UK since 1991. Thanks to the UK Fireball Alliance’s sky-watching network of video cameras, as well as reports from eyewitnesses, scientists were able to map the area around the meteorite’s fall to triangulate.
The next day, search teams were on the scene. They were able to quickly recover fragments of the meteorite, in some cases within an hour of landfall and before The Earth’s Atmosphere that they were able to chemically alter the space rock in any serious way (although some of the fragments showed terrestrial contamination, including from table salt). A total of 602 grams (21.2 ounces) worth of material was collected.
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Despite their fiery journey, the Winchcombe meteorite fragments are as pristine as you might expect. Embedded in the meteorite’s composition is its secret history that scientists can unravel through sophisticated transmission electron microscopy and techniques such as electron backscatter diffraction, secondary ion mass spectrometry and atom probe tomography.
These are all methods that are usually used on valuable material sent to him World three sample asteroid return missions; It is thanks to Winchcombe’s piece that scientists could use these sensitive tools how good are the samples.
“This level of analysis of the Winchcombe sediment is almost unprecedented for materials not directly returned to Earth from space missions, such as lunar rocks from Program Apollo or samples from the Ryugu asteroid collected by the Hayabusa 2 probe,” said Leon Hicks of the University of Leicester in a statement.
The investigation revealed that the fragments were made of breccia, which is when individual chunks of rock are cemented together (not literally with cement used to build houses, but through a mixture called a cataclastic mixture). The Winchcombe meteorite is classified as a CM carbonaceous chondrite, which is a carbon-rich rock. The analysis, which examined the fragments at the nanometer scale, found that the Winchcombe breccia was made from eight different types of CM chondrite, which is the most common variation of carbonaceous chondrite.
“We were very interested to find out how fragmented the breccia was within the Winchcombe sample we analysed,” said Luke Daly from the University of Glasgow, who led the research. “If you imagine the Winchcombe meteorite as a jigsaw puzzle, what we saw in the analysis was that each of the jigsaw pieces themselves had also been cut into smaller pieces and then mixed in a bag filled with fragments of seven pieces other puzzles.”
This suggests that the parent asteroid of the Winchcombe meteorite was broken apart and reformed many times, probably after collisions with other asteroids early in the time period. Solar systemhistory.
In addition, the meteorite fragments also show clear evidence of chemical alteration liquid water before breaking up. In some cases, water-altered grains were found right next to unaltered grains, so the breccia had become quite mixed. There was also an unexpected abundance of carbonate material such as aragonite, calcite and dolomite. These are carbon-based minerals, and it is understood that Winchcombe’s parent asteroid once held large amounts of carbon dioxide ice. Some event, perhaps a collision, melted this ice and allowed it to chemically alter the rock to form the carbonates. This could also explain the obscure carbonate-rich veins found on the surface of the asteroid Bennu by NASA OSIRIS-REx mission.
“It gives us a clearer idea of how impacts must have struck and reformed over and over during its lifetime since it coalesced out of the solar nebula billions of years ago,” Daly said.
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These results are not the first discoveries made under the Winchcombe mine, however. Earlier this year several groups of scientists indicated that electron microscopy had advanced amino acids found and nucleobases within the meteorite. Although these molecules are not directly related to life as we know it, they are precursors to more complex amino acids known to be biologically useful.
The presence of water on the parent asteroid of the Winchcombe meteorite could also help to understand where Earth’s water came from. The leading theory is that it was brought to Earth by impacts, but what were the impacts Comets or asteroids? Carbonaceous chondrites appear to be the most likely source, and the water-altered Winchcombe samples could be a key piece of evidence if future research can reveal more about whether the deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio in the asteroid’s water meets Earth’s water.
The research was published on April 16 in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science.
