NASA Scientists Find Diamonds and in Sutter's Mill Gold Rush Meteorite

Fragments of the Sutter’s Mill meteorite fall collected by NASA Ames and SETI Institute meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens in the evening of Tuesday April 24, 2012, two days after the fall. This was the second recovered find.

Image Credit: NASA Ames/Eric James

This is a secondary electron image of two large diamond crystals in the matrix of the Sutter's Mill number SM2 meteorite, as prepared by a focused ion beam. 

The origin of the diamonds is something of a mystery since they are considerably larger than those found in any chondritic meteorites.

Image Credit: NASA Johnson/M. Zolensky

The diamonds are transparent and colorless in this optical image of the same focused ion beam-prepared slice of Sutter's Mill number SM2.

Image Credit: NASA Johnson/M. Zolensky

Researchers digging deeper into the origins of the Sutter's Mill meteorite, which fell in California's Gold Country in 2012, found diamonds and other "treasures" that provide important new insight into the early days of our solar system.

They report their results in thirteen papers in the November issue of Meteoritics & Planetary Science.

"Sutter's Mill gives us a glimpse of what future NASA spacecraft may find when they bring back samples from a primitive asteroid,” said consortium lead Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

"From what falls naturally to the ground, much does not survive the violent collision with Earth's atmosphere."

Jenniskens found one of the first and one of the most unusual of the Sutter's Mill meteorites before rain hit the area.

In his search, Jenniskens was guided by Marc Fries of NASA's Johnson Space Center, in Houston, who describes in detail how Doppler weather radar enabled the rapid and pristine collection of the meteorites.

"The two 10-micron diamond grains we found in this meteorite are too small to sparkle in a ring," said Mike Zolensky, space scientist of Johnson, working with associate professor Yoko Kebukawa late of Hokkaido University, Japan, "But their size is much larger than the nanometer-sized diamonds commonly found in such meteorites."

Nano-diamonds are thought to originate in the atmospheres of stars. The larger diamonds found in Sutter's Mill may have had another origin closer to home.

"We suspect that these diamonds are so-called xenoliths,” says Kebukawa. "Bits and pieces that originated in the interior of other much larger parent bodies."

University of California (UC), Davis researchers Akane Yamakawa and Qing-Zhu Yin studied the different forms of the element chromium, called isotopes.

They found that at least five different stellar sources composed of mixtures of 54-chromium-rich and -poor materials must have contributed matter to the nascent solar system four and half billion years ago. Some of these materials remained in the Sutter's Mill meteorite.

"The formation of the solar system did not fully erase and homogenise these signatures and Sutter’s Mill provides the clearest record yet," said Yin, also a co-lead of the Sutter’s Mill Meteorite Consortium.

Some fragments escaped alteration by liquid water, while others where heavily altered. Based on isotopes of the elements manganese and chromium, NASA Earth and Space Science Fellow Christine Jilly and colleagues now report when that happened.

"We determined that minerals such as calcium and magnesium carbonate likely precipitated from liquid water 2.4 to 5.0 million years after the formation of the solar system," says Jilly.

"It is possible that radioactive compounds in the meteorite's parent body heated the nascent planet to the point that water ice became liquid."

In primitive meteorites like Sutter's Mill, some grains survive from what existed in the cloud of gas, dust and ices that formed the solar system.

In Sutter's Mill, the liquid water appears to have destroyed the silicate type of these, according to Xuchao Zhao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, working with NASA and UC Davis colleagues.

Meteorite Captured Exploding in Earth atmosphere - Video

Photographer Wes Eisenhauer has taken some pretty extraordinary footage of the night sky you’ll want to see.

While filming a timelapse of the Milky Way Galaxy on October 16, Eisenhauer captured a fireball in the sky that seemed to spontaneously explode.

This incredible phenomenon is actually known as a bolide (meaning missile in Greek), which is basically a meteorite that explodes, leaving behind a red dust trail.

But if you watch closely, after this fireball explodes, it leaves a heavenly halo in its wake-it’s definitely something you need to see to believe.

Most Water in Lunar Soil generated by Solar Wind

This is a composite image of the lunar nearside taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in June 2009, note the presence of dark areas of maria on this side of the moon. Credit: NASA

A pair of researchers with the Sorbonne Universités, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, has determined that most of the water in the soil on the surface of the moon was formed due to protons in the solar wind colliding with oxygen in lunar dust, rather than from comet or meteorite impacts.

In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Alice Stephant and François Robert describe their study and the results they found.

When NASA astronauts brought back soil and rock samples from the moon, it was assumed by most in the scientific community that everything they found was dry, that there was no water in any of it.

Subsequent analysis using newer techniques has revealed that not only is there water beneath the surface in some places, but the dust on the surface also has small amounts as well.

Once this became known, most scientists assumed the water got there due to comet or meteorite impacts, in this new effort, the research pair suggests that conventional thinking is wrong once again and that the water, at least in the surface dust, comes about due to the impact of solar wind on tiny dust particles.

In studying tiny grains of lunar soil samples, the researchers found that the reduction of oxygen from silicates in the soil by protons from the solar wind was almost certainly the means by which the water was generated.

They came to that conclusion through determining the lithium isotope ratio in the samples (plagioclase rock found on the surface of the moon) which gave the isotope ratio for the hydrogen, from that they were able to calculate the deuterium-hydrogen ratio which they compared to the amount of water actually in the granule sample.

They found that on average, the granules contained just 15 percent water from somewhere else (presumably comets or meteorites) leaving the rest to have been formed due to the solar wind interaction. They note also that for some samples, all of the water was due to solar wind interaction.

The duo is quick to point out that their conclusions only relate to water found on the surface of the moon, where the water below the surface came from is still up for conjecture.

More information: "The negligible chondritic contribution in the lunar soils water" - Alice Stephant, PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1408118111

ESA Herschel: Young sun's violent history solves meteorite mystery

An illustration of the wind blown by a newborn star. 

When the energetic particles hit the surrounding material, they may collide with atoms that are present in the star's environment, break them apart and produce new elements. 

Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

Astronomers using ESA's Herschel space observatory to probe the turbulent beginnings of a Sun-like star have found evidence of mighty stellar winds that could solve a puzzling meteorite mystery in our own back yard.

In spite of their tranquil appearance in the night sky, stars are scorching furnaces that spring to life through tumultuous processes, and our 4.5 billion-year-old Sun is no exception.

To glimpse its harsh early days, astronomers gather clues not only in the Solar System but also by studying young stars elsewhere in our Galaxy.

Using Herschel to survey the chemical composition of regions where stars are being born today, a team of astronomers has noticed that one object in particular is different.

The unusual source is a prolific stellar nursery called OMC2 FIR4, a clump of new stars embedded in a gaseous and dusty cloud near to the famous Orion Nebula.

"To our great surprise, we found that the proportion of two chemical species, one based on carbon and oxygen and the other on nitrogen, is much smaller in this object than in any other protostar we know," says Dr Cecilia Ceccarelli, of the Institute de Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble, France, who lead the study with Dr Carsten Dominik of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

In an extremely cold environment, the measured proportion could arise by one of the two compounds freezing onto dust grains and becoming undetectable.

However, at the relatively 'high' temperature of about –200°C found in star-forming regions like OMC2 FIR4, this should not occur.

"The most likely cause in this environment is a violent wind of very energetic particles, released by at least one of the embryonic stars taking shape in this proto-stellar cocoon," Dr Ceccarelli adds.

Orion A, a star-forming nebula lying about 1500 light-years from Earth, as viewed by ESA’s Herschel space observatory.

Orion A is located within the ‘sword of Orion,’ below the three main stars that form the belt of the Orion constellation. 

Embedded in the gaseous and dusty environment of this molecular cloud is the prolific stellar nursery called OMC2 FIR4 (highlighted with a red circle). 

Astronomers studying OMC2 FIR4 with Herschel have discovered that at least one of the embryo stars that are taking shape in this protostellar cocoon is gusting a powerful wind of very energetic particles. 

The inset shows an illustration of the wind blown by this newborn star. 

When the energetic particles hit the surrounding material, they may collide with atoms that are present in the star's environment, break them apart and produce new elements. 

Our Sun likely gusted a similar wind of particles in its early days; this could explain the origin of a puzzling isotope of beryllium, whose traces are found in meteorites. 

Credit: Herschel image: ESA/Herschel/Ph. André, D. Polychroni, A. Roy, V. Könyves, N. Schneider for the Gould Belt survey Key Programme; inset and layout: ESA/ATG medialab

The most abundant molecule in star-forming clouds, hydrogen, can be broken apart by cosmic rays, energetic particles that permeate the entire Galaxy.

The hydrogen ions then combine with other elements that are present – albeit only in trace amounts – in these clouds: carbon and oxygen, or nitrogen.

Normally, the nitrogen compound is also quickly destroyed, yielding more hydrogen for the carbon and oxygen compound. As a result, the latter is far more abundant in all known stellar nurseries.

Strangely enough, though, this was not the case for OMC2 FIR4, suggesting that an additional wind of energetic particles is destroying both chemical species, keeping their abundances more similar.

Astronomers think that a similarly violent wind of particles also gusted through the early Solar System, and this discovery might finally point to an explanation for the origin of a particular chemical element seen in meteorites.

Meteorites are the remains of interplanetary debris that survived the trip through our planet's atmosphere.

These cosmic messengers are one of the few tools we have to directly probe the elements in our Solar System.

"Some elements detected in meteorites reveal that, long ago, these rocks contained a form of beryllium: this is quite puzzling, as we can't quite understand how it got there," explains Dr Dominik.

Isotope Beryllium-10 formation
The formation of the isotope Beryllium-10 in the Universe is an intricate puzzle of its own.

Astronomers know that it is not produced in the interior of stars, like some other elements, nor in the supernova explosion that happens at the end of a massive star's life.

The majority of beryllium-10 was formed in collisions of very energetic particles with heavier elements like oxygen, but since this isotope decays very quickly into other elements, it must have been produced just before it was incorporated in the rocks that would later appear on Earth as meteorites.

To trigger these reactions and produce an amount of beryllium matching that recorded in meteorites, our own Sun must have blown a violent wind in its youth.

These new observations of OMC2 FIR4 give a very strong hint that it is possible for a young star to do this.

"Observing star-forming regions with Herschel not only provides us with a view on what happens beyond our cosmic neighbourhood, but it's also a crucial way to piece together the past of our own Sun and Solar System," says Göran Pilbratt, ESA's Herschel project scientist.

More information: "Herschel finds evidence for stellar wind particles in a protostellar envelope: is this what happened to the young Sun?" by C. Ceccarelli et al. is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, July 2014. iopscience.iop.org/2041-8205/790/1/L1/article

Meteorite find: 'missing half' of interstellar collision

The Thorsberg quarry and the Mysterious Object. 

• (A) Thorsberg quarry on June 15, 2013. The Österplana church is seen in the back. 
• (B) The Mysterious Object from the Glaskarten 3 bed. 

The meteorite is 8 × 6.5 × 2 cm in size. It was found in the youngest quarried bed of the Thorsberg quarry, at the top of the section.

Credit: Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

A team of researchers with members from the U.S., Sweden and Switzerland studying a meteorite found in a Swedish quarry is reporting that the rock is unlike anything else ever found.

In their paper published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, they suggest the meteorite might just be evidence of a collision between two asteroids millions of years ago.

For several years scientists have debated the reason behind a lull, then sudden resurgence of biodiversity on planet Earth a little over 500 million years ago, some suggest the resurgence was due to a sudden major increase in the number of meteorite impacts.

The increase, theorists suggest, came about due to an impact between two asteroids, likely somewhere between Jupiter and Mars.

Debris from the remains of one of those objects is believed to be the source of L chondrites, which have been found in many places around the globe but, until now, no evidence of the other asteroid has been found on Earth, putting a damper on the theory, some have suggested the second asteroid simply vapourised on impact.

The meteorite found in Sweden has reignited interest, however, because it's possible it is a piece of that second asteroid (because it appears to have been part of the same meteor shower as the L chondrites), which if true, will add a lot of credence to the entire theory that seeks to explain the sudden resurgence of life during the early part of the Ordovician period.

The meteorite was found by quarry workers three years ago, other meteorites have been found in the same quarry before, but all of them were L chondrites.

It was different from the other's, the researchers noted, after studying its crystals, but was in the same rock layer and dating in the lab, suggesting it arrived during the same time period as part of a wider meteor shower.

While still in the same class of primitive achondrites as L chondrites, it's not exactly the same because of small differences in its elemental composition.

The team is hopeful that the finding suggests that others will be found, hopefully some that can offer more evidence of their origin.

The unique meteorite has not been given an official name yet—for now it's simply being referred to as the "mysterious object."

More information: A fossil winonaite-like meteorite in Ordovician limestone: A piece of the impactor that broke up the L-chondrite parent body? Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 400, 15 August 2014, Pages 145–152. www.sciencedirect.com/science/… ii/S0012821X14003367

Asteroid and Comet Impacts: Impact glass stores biodata for millions of years

The scorching heat produced by asteroid or comet impacts can melt tons of soil and rock, some of which forms glass as it cools. 

Some of that glass preserves bits of ancient plant material. 

Credit: Brown University

Bits of plant life encapsulated in molten glass by asteroid and comet impacts millions of years ago give geologists information about climate and life forms on the ancient Earth.

Scientists exploring large fields of impact glass in Argentina suggest that what happened on Earth might well have happened on Mars millions of years ago. Martian impact glass could hold traces of organic compounds.

Asteroid and comet impacts can cause widespread ecological havoc, killing off plants and animals on regional or even global scales.

But new research from Brown University shows that impacts can also preserve the signatures of ancient life at the time of an impact.

A research team led by Brown geologist Pete Schultz has found fragments of leaves and preserved organic compounds lodged inside glass created by a several ancient impacts in Argentina.

The material could provide a snapshot of environmental conditions at the time of those impacts. The find also suggests that impact glasses could be a good place to look for signs of ancient life on Mars.

The work is published in the latest issue of Geology magazine.

The scorching heat produced by asteroid or comet impacts can melt tons of soil and rock, some of which forms glass as it cools.

The soil of eastern Argentina, south of Buenos Aires, is rife with impact glass created by at least seven different impacts that occurred between 6,000 and 9 million years ago, according to Schultz.

One of those impacts, dated to around 3 million years ago, coincides with the disappearance of 35 animal genera, as reported in the journal Science a few years back.

"We know these were major impacts because of how far the glass is distributed and how big the chunks are," Schultz said.

"These glasses are present in different layers of sediment throughout an area about the size of Texas."

Within glass associated with two of those impacts—one from 3 million years ago and one from 9 million years ago, Schultz and his colleagues found exquisitely preserved plant matter.

"These glasses preserve plant morphology from macro features all the way down to the micron scale," Schultz said. "It's really remarkable."

The glass samples contain centimeter-size leaf fragments, including intact structures like papillae, tiny bumps that line leaf surfaces.

Bundles of vein-like structures found in several samples are very similar to modern pampas grass, a species common to that region of Argentina.

Chemical analysis of the samples also revealed the presence of organic hydrocarbons, the chemical signatures of living matter.

"Impact glass may be where the 4 billion-year-old signs of life are hiding," Schultz said. "On Mars they're probably not going to come out screaming in the form of a plant, but we may find traces of organic compounds, which would be really exciting."

More information: Paper: geology.gsapubs.org/content/early/2014/04/14/G35343.1.abstract

Read the full article here

Skandanavian skydiver's narrow miss with 'meteorite' - Video

Video footage has emerged of what some people have claimed is a meteorite falling to Earth and narrowly missing a skydiver, Anders Helstrup.

One specialist suggested the object might be in "dark flight" - the portion of descent when a meteorite stops glowing after it enters the atmosphere.

Others were more sceptical, saying the object did not appear to be travelling fast enough.

The incident took place in June 2012 in southern Norway and the region has since been combed to find the space rock.

Moon rocks reveal surprising meteorite history

SHRIMP-2 Curtin University

Associate Prof Nemchin's discovery challenges the long-held view that there was a single spike in huge meteorite impacts 3.9 billion years ago. 

Credit: Curtin University

Alexander Nemchin, a WA geologist, analyzing lunar rock samples collected during the Apollo missions has uncovered evidence of a huge meteorite strike 4.2 billion years ago.

Curtin University Associate Professor Alexander Nemchin made the discovery when he dated a section of rock from the Moon that melted in heat of the meteorite impact.

The object that hit the Moon was probably tens of kilometers across and would have left a crater several hundred kilometers wide.

Associate Prof Nemchin says the strike happened at least 300 million years before the youngest known lunar impact basins and his discovery challenges the long-held view that there was a single spike in huge impacts 3.9 billion years ago.

He says this period of intense meteorite bombardment, which would have affected both the Moon and the Earth, was previously thought to be a one-off event.

"A few years ago we started to see evidence that it's probably not quite the case," Nemchin says.

"It's possible that there are some impacts not related to this 3.9 [billion years] spike … there are some that happened much earlier.

"It has implications for a number of things including how life evolved on Earth."

Nemchin analysed the moon rock using SHRIMP, an ion probe instrument, at Curtin University, which allows researchers to determine the age of tiny amounts of rock by examining the atoms that make up the sample.

He was able to borrow the rock, which was collected from the rim of North Ray crater during the Apollo 16 mission, because of NASA's relatively open approach to the use of moon rocks for scientific research.

"All you need is to have record of doing scientific research, you need to demonstrate that you've got a way to keep the samples safe and you know how to work with small, rare samples," Nemchin says.

"It's really very open in many ways."

Nemchin says currently the best explanation for any increase in meteorite impacts throughout the Solar System 3.9 billion years ago is that some planets were thought to be displaced from their normal orbits at that time.

He says the movement of Jupiter and Saturn, with their huge mass, destabilised Neptune and sent smaller asteroids and comets "randomly flying around" in the Solar System.

"Of course when they go all over the place they start hitting all the other planets," Nemchin says.

Massive Star Explosion Seeded the Early Solar System, Meteorite Study

A supernova could have shot matter into the early solar system, a new study shows. 

Credit: NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/CXC/SAO

The explosive death of a star seeded matter into the solar system soon after its birth, analysis of a meteorite now reveals.

Earth and the rest of the solar system coalesced from a giant cloud of gas and dust more than 4.5 billion years ago.

Many of the details about the galactic neighborhood in which the solar system arose still remain a mystery.

Meteorites contain some of the oldest material in the solar system, dating back to its formation. As such, researchers often analyze these objects in order to discover what materials were present when the sun, Earth and other planets were born.

This study sheds light on where these solar system bodies might have come from.

All elements heavier than nickel are ultimately created by supernovas, giant explosions resulting from the deaths of stars.

These explosions are bright enough to momentarily outshine their entire galaxies. Now, scientists analyzing meteorites have found that a supernova may have injected matter into the solar system within a small window of time after the solar system's first solids formed.

Gregory Brennecka

"This is evidence for supernova addition at the very start of our solar system, over 4.5 billion years ago," said the meteorite study's lead author, Gregory Brennecka, a cosmochemist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Brennecka and his colleagues investigated the Allende meteorite, which fell to Earth as a fireball in Mexico in 1969.

They focused on lumps within this meteorite known as calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions.

These particles are some of the oldest objects in the solar system — they were the first solids to form in the protoplanetary disk that eventually gave rise to Earth and the other planets.

The scientists focused on a wide range of isotopes within the inclusions. In general, elements come in a variety of isotopes that differ in how many neutrons they possess in their atomic nuclei; carbon-12 has six neutrons, while carbon-13 has seven. (Both have six protons.)

Solar System: Life began on Mars - Boron and Molybdenum

New evidence has emerged which supports the long-debated theory that life on Earth may have started on Mars.

Professor Steven Benner will tell geochemists gathering today (Thursday 29 Aug) at the annual Goldschmidt conference that an oxidized mineral form of the element molybdenum, which may have been crucial to the origin of life, could only have been available on the surface of Mars and not on Earth.

"In addition", said Professor Benner "recent studies show that these conditions, suitable for the origin of life, may still exist on Mars."

"It's only when molybdenum becomes highly oxidized that it is able to influence how early life formed," explains Professor Benner, from The Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology in the USA.

"This form of molybdenum couldn't have been available on Earth at the time life first began, because three billion years ago the surface of the Earth had very little oxygen, but Mars did. It's yet another piece of evidence which makes it more likely life came to Earth on a Martian meteorite, rather than starting on this planet."

The research Professor Benner will present at the Goldschmidt conference tackles two of the paradoxes which make it difficult for scientists to understand how life could have started on Earth.

The first is dubbed by Professor Benner as the 'tar paradox'. All living things are made of organic matter, but if you add energy such as heat or light to organic molecules and leave them to themselves, they don't create life. Instead, they turn into something more like tar, oil or asphalt.

"Certain elements seem able to control the propensity of organic materials to turn into tar, particularly boron and molybdenum, so we believe that minerals containing both were fundamental to life first starting," says Professor Benner.

"Analysis of a Martian meteorite recently showed that there was boron on Mars; we now believe that the oxidized form of molybdenum was there too."

The second paradox is that life would have struggled to start on the early Earth because it was likely to have been totally covered by water.

Not only would this have prevented sufficient concentrations of boron forming – it's currently only found in very dry places like Death Valley – but water is corrosive to RNA, which scientists believe was the first genetic molecule to appear.

Although there was water on Mars, it covered much smaller areas than on early Earth.

"The evidence seems to be building that we are actually all Martians; that life started on Mars and came to Earth on a rock," says Professor Benner.

"It's lucky that we ended up here nevertheless, as certainly Earth has been the better of the two planets for sustaining life. If our hypothetical Martian ancestors had remained on Mars, there might not have been a story to tell."

More information: goldschmidt.info/2013/

Hawaii Astrobiologists find Martian clay contains Chemical Organics

Electron microscope image showing the 700-million-year-old Martian clay veins containing boron (100 µm = one tenth of a millimeter).

Researchers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa NASA Astrobiology Institute (UHNAI) have discovered high concentrations of boron in a Martian meteorite.

When present in its oxidized form (borate), boron may have played a key role in the formation of RNA, one of the building blocks for life.

The work was published on June 6 in PLOS One.

The Antarctic Search for Meteorites team found the Martian meteorite used in this study in Antarctica during its 2009-2010 field season.

The minerals it contains, as well as its chemical composition, clearly show that it is of Martian origin.

Using the ion microprobe in the W. M. Keck Cosmochemistry Laboratory at UH, the team was able to analyze veins of Martian clay in the meteorite.

After ruling out contamination from Earth, they determined boron abundances in these clays are over ten times higher than in any previously measured meteorite.

"Borates may have been important for the origin of life on Earth because they can stabilize ribose, a crucial component of RNA. In early life RNA is thought to have been the informational precursor to DNA," said James Stephenson, a UHNAI postdoctoral fellow.

RNA may have been the first molecule to store information and pass it on to the next generation, a mechanism crucial for evolution.

Although life has now evolved a sophisticated mechanism to synthesize RNA, the first RNA molecules must have been made without such help.

One of the most difficult steps in making RNA nonbiologically is the formation of the RNA sugar component, ribose. Previous laboratory tests have shown that without borate the chemicals available on the early Earth fail to build ribose.

However, in the presence of borate, ribose is spontaneously produced and stabilized.

This work was born from the uniquely interdisciplinary environment of UHNAI. The lead authors on the paper, Stephenson, an evolutionary biologist, and Lydia Hallis, a cosmochemist who is also a UHNAI postdoctoral fellow, first came up with the idea over an after-work beer.

"Given that boron has been implicated in the emergence of life, I had assumed that it was well characterized in meteorites," said Stephenson.

"Discussing this with Dr. Hallis, I found out that it was barely studied. I was shocked and excited. She then informed me that both the samples and the specialized machinery needed to analyze them were available at UH."

More information: 
Stephenson, J. D., Hallis, L. J., Nagashima K., and Freeland, S. J. 2013, "Boron Enrichment in Martian Clay," PLoS ONE 8(6): e64624. dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0064624

Russian Meteorite Impact: One-Kilo Meteorite Fragment Found

One-Kilo Meteorite Fragment Found. 

Image courtesy Russian Academy of Sciences.

Scientists from Russia's Urals Federal University have discovered a meteorite fragment weighing more than one kilogram (2.2 lbs), the largest found so far from the meteorite strike that hit the Urals region on February 15, University expedition chief Viktor Grokhovsky said on Monday.



A total of more than 100 fragments have been found by the expedition along a 50 kilometer (30 mile) trail under the meteorite's flight path, he said.

Over 1,500 people were injured and thousands of buildings damaged when the massive meteorite streaked across the sky over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk.

US space agency NASA estimates the meteorite was roughly 15 meters (50 feet) in diameter when it struck Earth's atmosphere, travelling several times the speed of sound, and exploded into a fireball brighter than the morning sun.

Fragments of the meteorite have been found in an eight-meter (25 feet) wide crater in the region's Lake Chebarkul, scientists said earlier this week.

Large, Fast and Rare Meteorite hits the Earth

Geology professor Qing-zhu Yin holds a fragment of the Sutter Mill meteorite that exploded over the Sierra foothills this past spring. (Gregory Urquiaga/UC Davis photo).

A meteorite that exploded as a fireball over California's Sierra foothills this past spring was among the fastest, rarest meteorites known to have hit the Earth, and it traveled a highly eccentric orbital route to get here.

An international team of scientists presents these and other findings in a study published Friday, Dec. 21, in the journal Science.

The 70-member team included nine researchers from UC Davis, along with scientists from the SETI Institute, NASA and other institutions.

The researchers found that the meteorite that fell over Northern California on April 22 was the rarest type known to have hit the Earth - a carbonaceous chondrite. It is composed of cosmic dust and presolar materials that helped form the planets of the solar system.

The scientists learned that the meteorite formed about 4.5 billion years ago was knocked off its parent body, which may have been an asteroid or a Jupiter-family comet, roughly 50,000 years ago.

Once it left the comet, it began its journey to Earth and exploded over Sutter's Mill, the gold discovery site that sparked the California Gold Rush.

As it flew toward Earth, it traveled an eccentric course through the solar system, flying from an orbit close to Jupiter toward the sun, passing by Mercury and Venus, and then flying out to hit Earth.

The high-speed, minivan-sized meteorite entered the atmosphere at about 64,000 miles per hour.

The study said it was the fastest, "most energetic" reported meteorite that's fallen since 2008, when an asteroid fell over Sudan.

"If this were a much bigger object and had landed in a more populated area, then this could have been a disaster," said co-author and UC Davis geology professor Qing-zhu Yin. "But, in this case, it is a happy."

Before entering Earth's atmosphere, the meteorite is estimated to have weighed roughly 100,000 pounds but most of that mass burned away when the meteorite exploded. Scientists and private collectors have recovered about 2 pounds remaining.

Panguite: New Prehistoric Mineral Discovered in Meteorite

Scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have discovered panguite, a new mineral, embedded in a meteorite.

They believe that the mineral existed way before earth and other planets were formed.

The discovery was made while studying the Allende meteorite.

The Allende meteorite fell across the state of Chihuahua, Mexico in 1969.

More than 40 years later, the meteorite is still serving the scientific community as a rich source of information about the early stages of our solar system's evolution.

Scientists, analysing the Allende meteorite using a scanning electron microscope, were stunned to find a mineral prompting them to name it panguite. This mineral contains some amount of a new type of titanium oxide, never discovered before.

The panguite is named after Pan Gu, a giant from ancient Chinese mythology who, it is believed, established the world by separating yin from yang to create the earth and the sky.

"Panguite is an especially exciting discovery since it is not only a new mineral, but also a material previously unknown to science," said Chi Ma, scientist and director of the Geological and Planetary Sciences division's Analytical Facility at Caltech, in a statement.

Scientists claim that the Allende meteorite is the largest carbonaceous chondrite - a diverse class of primitive meteorites - ever found on our planet and is considered by many as the best-studied meteorite in history.

Till now, scientists have discovered nine new minerals, including panguite, in the Allende meteorite. Some of those minerals are allendeite, hexamolybdenum, tistarite, and kangite.

"The intensive studies of objects in this meteorite have had a tremendous influence on current thinking about processes, timing, and chemistry in the primitive solar nebula and small planetary bodies," said Professor George Rossman, scientist at the Caltech, in a statement.

Last year, another group of scientists discovered a new mineral called "Wassonite". Wassonite was discovered within the Yamato 691 enstatite chondrite meteorite.

Wassonite is a mineral formed from only two elements, sulphur and titanium, yet it possesses a unique crystal structure that has not been previously observed in nature, according to a Nasa report.

Caltech scientists are now studying panguite and other newly discovered refractory minerals. They believe that their study will help them know more about the conditions under which they were formed and subsequently evolved.

"Such investigations are essential to understand the origins of our solar system," said Ma.

Hunt is on for pieces of van-sized California meteor

Wanted: fragments of a minivan-sized meteor that exploded over northern California and Nevada on Sunday morning and may well have survived to strike Earth.

Meteorites – meteors that make landfall – can provide crucial information about the chemical composition of the early solar system.

"It's like getting sample return without having to go there," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama.

However, meteorites are rare. Though meteors frequently streak across the sky, they tend to burn up before reaching the ground or they land in the sea. There's reason to think the recent meteor is different.

Apart from exploding over land, it created a sonic boom, so it must have stayed intact for long enough for it to get down into the denser air low in the atmosphere – just 16 kilometres above the Earth's surface, Cooke reckons – raising the chance that some of it hit the dirt.

Sudan similarity
He estimates it was about 4 metres long, about 70 metric tonnes and packing the energy of 4 kilotonnes of TNT. "That's about one-fourth the energy of the 'Little Boy' bomb dropped on Hiroshima," he says.

That makes the rock even bigger than 2008 TC3, a meteorite which was detected before it entered the atmosphere and became the first cosmic impact to be traced from space to landfall when astronomers found its scattered fragments in Sudan in 2008.

Cooke is also hoping someone took a video of the new meteor.

Astronomers used infrasound signals – low frequency sound that travels great distances – detected at two ground-based stations to pinpoint the spots where the new meteor entered the atmosphere and then exploded. They don't yet know where the fragments went.

Valuable Meteorite Crashes Into House: Oslo, Norway

A Norwegian family was shocked to find a valuable meteorite in their cottage house in the middle of Oslo.

The meteorite weighed around 585 grammes, which is around one pound, four ounces.

An astrophysicist from the University of Oslo investigated the meteorite and found it be genuine.

 "You can tell immediately that it's genuine from the burned crust, and you can also recognize it from how rough and unusual it is. It gives me goosebumps," Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard, astrophysicist at the University of Oslo stated.

According to researchers, such meteorites can a fetch lot of money, potentially worth more than $500,000. They are quite valuable to researchers as well as private collectors. Earlier, chunks of Mars have fetched $877 per gram.

"This family is very lucky," Serge Koutchmy, a researcher at the Paris Astrophysical Institute, reported. "First of all because the piece of meteorite did not cause much damage, and secondly, because it is worth a small fortune."

Martian Meteorite on Display [VIDEO]

Researchers from the Natural History Museum in London have discovered a huge Martian meteorite which is now on temporary display in the Museum's vault gallery.

Researchers believe the meteorite will help them unravel the mysteries of Mars. The meteorite fell in a desert at Tissint in Morocco on July 18, 2011. It weighs around 1.1kg and is now the largest Martian meteorite in the museum's collection. This meteorite is also known as the Tissint Meteorite.

According to the researchers, every year about 1,000 meteorites land on Earth, ranging from the size of a football to a washing machine. Even though so many meteorites fall, it is very rare to get a Martian meteorite because it easily get contaminated when it reaches the earth's atmosphere due to moisture present in the air. The researchers should recover it very quickly before it completely gets contaminated.

"Arguably this is the most important meteorite to have fallen in 100 years and we now have the largest piece in our collection," said Dr Caroline Smith from the Natural History Museum. "Martian meteorites are incredibly rare, and when they have been seen to fall and recovered quickly, like Tissint, they offer a unique insight into the Red Planet."

"The importance of this new acquisition cannot be understated," said Dr David Parker, Director of Science, Technology and Exploration from the UK Space Agency. "And the fact that the UK now holds the largest sample of the Tissint meteorite in any public collection in the world is a great opportunity for UK planetary researchers," he added.

"Man may not set foot on Mars in the near future, but Mars has come to us. This close-up view will bring new scientific understanding, to spur our children on to further exploration on the surface of the planet itself," Dave Gheesling from the Falling Rocks Collection in Atlanta, sold the main mass to the Museum.

UK Astronomer Creates Wine from 4 Billion-Year-Old Meteorite

An UK astronomer has, apparently, created wine from a 4.5 billion year old meteorite!

Ex-pat, Ian Hutechon has labelled his astronomical-alcoholic creation - Meteorito. The wine was created by placing a meteorite inside a wine barrel.

The base wine was from Hutcheon's own vineyard, in the Cachapoal Valley of Chile, which he bought in 2009.

The specially chosen grapes are fermented for 25 days before placed in a vine barrel with a three-inch (7.6cm) piece of the meteorite.

Apparently there are already 10,000 litres of this other-worldly drink ready.

The meteorite itself, incidentally, came from an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and crashed into the Atacama Desert some 6,000 years ago.

The wine is available only at the Centro Astronomico Tagua Tagua observatory, which was established by Hutcheon in 2007.

"A major difference is that you are tasting elements from the birth of the solar system, and that for me this is a major difference," said Hutcheon, the creator of this special wine.

"You are tasting space, in a way you physically taste elements of the solar system and of the history of the meteorite that spent millions of years orbiting the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, you are tasting that," he added.

MARS: Meteorites in Morocco confirmed

This handout photo provided by Darryl Pitt of the Macovich Collection shows an external view of a Martian meteorite recovered in December 2011 near Foumzgit, Morocco following a meteorite shower believed to have occurred in July 2011.

Darryl Pitt/Macovich Collection/AP

A hail of Martian meteorites crashed to Earth last July, and collectors and scientists around the world are snapping up the ultra-rare rocks for display and study.

The meteorites fell in the Moroccan desert in July and were recovered a few months later.

Scientists confirmed today (Jan. 17) that the rocks are Martian, presumably blasted off the Red Planet by an asteroid strike.

The rocks are a rare treat for researchers, allowing them to investigate relatively pristine chunks of Martian material. Such freshly delivered pieces of the Red Planet have been found on only four other occasions, the last time in 1962.

As a result of their scarcity and scientific value, the rocks are selling for incredibly high prices — 10 times the price of gold or more. News of the meteorites' Martian origin was first reported by the Associated Press.

"In the world of meteoritics, a fall is as good as it gets," said Carl Agee, director of the Institute of Meteoritics and meteorite curator at the University of New Mexico.

"We know that everything we're looking at is Martian, and that there's nothing in there that is confusing matters." [7 Biggest Mysteries of Mars]

Mysterious Quasicrystals May Have Fallen From Space, Study Says - International Business Times

A new study indicates that quasicrystals, a type of mineral once thought to be "impossible" in nature, is of extraterrestrial origin and probably around 4.5 billion years old.

Found in Russia's Koryak mountains,the quasicrystals may have fallen to Earth from space, according to a new study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The crystals had only been created in laboratories before geologists found them entertwined with a silica mineral that forms only at high pressures, and might have been created by a collision with chondrite body.

Scientists say that unlike conventional crystals, quasicrystals contain mathematically regular but unique units that never appear twice, unlike regular crystals which are made up of regular, repeating units.

Quasicrystals first became known to science in early 1980s when researcher Daniel Shechtman created them in his laboratory. Since then scientists replicated Schechtman's findings in labs.

Two years ago, a fragment of rock from Russia's Koryak mountains which because the first example of a naturally-occuring quasicrystal.

A team of researchers carried out an analysis of the sample based on the theory that the quasicrystal is part of a meteorite that fell to Earth.

According to a New Scientist report, the researchers say "the rock has experienced the extreme pressures and temperatures typical of the high-speed collisions that produce meteoroids in the asteroid belt."

In addition, the relative abundances of different oxygen isotopes in the rock matched those of other meteorites rather than the isotope levels of rocks from Earth, the report said.

The scientists added that the pattern of oxygen isotopes are typical of ancient meteorites called carnonaceous chondrites, which were formed at the birth of the Solar System, making the quasicrystal around 4.5 billion years old.

The findnigs of theoretical physicist Paul Steinhardt's study, who spent weeks tracing the origins of the world's only known natural example of a quasicrystal, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.