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Scientists have discovered fragments of a meteorite that fell near Berlin just after midnight on January 21st. This is a rare find, as it came from an asteroid that was discovered just before it entered the Earth’s atmosphere. Only a handful of recent events have allowed astronomers to trace the origins of rocks flying into the solar system.
Early analysis of the fragment shows something equally unusual. This meteorite is an aubrite, a meteorite of unknown origin that some scientists believe may be part of Mercury. They are so rare that they accounted for just 80 of the approximately 70,000 meteorites collected on Earth before last month’s event.
“It’s really exciting,” said Sarah Russell, a meteorite expert at London’s Natural History Museum. She said, “There are very few Albrights.”
The asteroid, which became a meteorite (or meteorite fragment), was first discovered by Hungarian astronomer Krystian Sarnetski three hours before it hit Earth’s atmosphere. A network of cameras tracked the rock 2024 BX1, which fell near the village of Ribec on the outskirts of Berlin. Estimates suggest that the rock was small, less than 3 feet in size. It still made a brilliant flash that was captured by cameras in many parts of Europe.
Peter Jenniskens, an astronomer at the SETI Institute in California, bought a plane ticket as soon as he heard about the meteorite.
“I found out about it Saturday afternoon,” he said. “Late Saturday night, I was on a plane to Berlin.”
During a nine-hour layover in Newark, Dr. Jenniskens calculated where meteorite fragments could be found, and once he touched down early Monday morning, he and nearly 20 students and volunteers immediately began searching for debris. I made it possible to do so.
They spent days trawling the fields around Ribbek. “I couldn’t find anything,” he said.
But that Thursday, January 25, a team of Polish meteor hunters announced that they had discovered the first fragment of a meteorite. “They might tell us what to look for,” Dr. Jenniskens said. The meteorite was not as black as one might expect from its passage through the atmosphere, but was light, like Earth’s rock.
With this information, Dr. Jenniskens’ team member Dominik Dieter, a student at the Free University of Berlin, discovered the meteorite on the ground in just two hours. Many more were soon discovered.
“It was unbelievable,” Dr. Jenniskens said. “More than 20 pieces were found.”
Researchers from the Natural History Museum in Berlin used an electron microscope probe to analyze the minerals in the debris. The results revealed that the rock was aubrite. This is the first time such a meteorite has been collected from a tracked fall.
The origin of aubrite, named after the French town of Aubre near where it was first discovered, remains a mystery because its composition does not match any other known meteorite sources in the solar system. I am. Some research suggests they are fragments of Mercury, but not all scientists support that origin story.
If Albright came directly from Mercury, 2024 BX1 would have originated in the inner solar system. However, tracing its path back, it appears that the asteroid’s original orbit was much wider and outside of Earth’s orbit.
“So this object could not have come to us directly from Mercury,” says Mark Freese, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
However, in the distant past, aubrites may have been ejected from Mercury into the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, forming a group called E-type asteroids. Although Dr. Fries remains skeptical, BX1’s trajectory in 2024 does not completely rule out this idea.
Whatever the origin, 2024 BX1 debris could prove scientifically interesting. “I’m sure the priority will be to figure out what its composition is and how it compares to other meteorites,” Dr Russell said.
Tracking such small asteroids before they hit the Earth’s atmosphere is also important for protecting the Earth from asteroids. David Farnocchia of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Research said small objects from space don’t always go undetected, like the 65-foot-wide Chelyabinsk meteorite that exploded over Russia in 2013, injuring people on the ground. He said it could cause problems. Hundreds of people. Knowing the trajectory in advance may buy you time to reach a safe location.
“If we could give a warning, no one would get hurt,” he said.
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