Asteroid that exploded over Germany is as old as our solar system: scientists confirm

Meteorites date back about 4.5 billion years.

Scientists have confirmed that an asteroid that exploded over Germany last month is a rare type of space rock that could help unravel Earth’s origins.according to space dot com, Fragments of asteroid 2024 BX1 were discovered just five days after the explosion. Scientists have analyzed the meteorite fragments and discovered that they are part of a rare group called aubrites. Meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute, who was part of the team that recovered the debris, also said that meteorites originated about 4.5 billion years ago, coinciding with the formation of solar system plants.

According to Jenniskens, there are only 11 known cases of Albright meteorites hitting Earth in the past. The rare meteorite is thought to represent just 1% of all known meteorites, the media said.

Albright meteorites are distinguished by their unique features. Unlike typical meteorites, they have a translucent glassy crust rather than a thick black one, and they look like gray granite, making them difficult to distinguish from normal Earth rocks at first.

However, after examining the space rock, scientists determined that the fragment had the typical mineralogical and chemical composition of an aubrite-type rock. “What’s interesting about this fall is that its orbit is so good that the shape of the orbit itself contains clues about where the source region of these meteorites was.” Jenniskens said.

“They likely came from inside the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, where there’s probably a lot of debris, and the impact created lots of smaller fragments called asteroid families,” he added. .

according to space dot com, 2024 Main-belt asteroids like BX1 formed around the same time as the solar system planets, about 4.5 billion years ago, from material around the infant Sun that was not consumed by planet formation. This means that scientists can get a glimpse of the rocky worlds in our solar system’s interior, especially the building blocks of Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Earth.

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Jenniskens also pointed out that these meteorite-like orbrites exhibit properties very similar to those on Earth, including water content and chemical ratios. These similarities provide researchers with a unique opportunity to study the materials involved in the formation of Earth billions of years ago.

“It’s very cool. We have remarkable, fresh material that could have been the building blocks from which Earth was formed. And that’s what’s so fascinating about this particular meteorite.” Jenniskens he said.

Notably, this asteroid is about 1 meter in size and erupted over Munich, Germany on January 21st. This asteroid is believed to be one of the smallest space rocks ever detected before impacting Earth.