New Meteorite!

Scientists discovered new type of meteorite, which landed on Earth around 470 million years ago.

22:16 16 June 2016

Scientists have discovered a rock believed to have crashed to Earth during one of the biggest space collisions in the last three billion years. It was found in a marine limestone quarry as part of a number of fragments, which landed on the Swedish site.

 

The four inches meteorite, which has been named Ost 65, is believed to have broken off a massive 62-mile asteroid during a violent collision in the asteroid belt. Scientists hope that it could cast light on the beginnings of our solar system.

 

Professor Birger Schmitz, a nuclear physicist at Lund University, Sweden, said: "The cosmic ray exposure age of Ost 65 shows it may be a fragment of the impactor that broke up the L-chondrite parent body.

 

"This may be the first documented example of an"extinct' meteorite, that is, a meteorite type that does not fall on Earth today because its parent body has been consumed by collisions.

 

"The meteorites found on Earth today apparently do not give a full representation of the kind of bodies in the asteroid belt around 500 millions years ago."

 

"The Ost 65 meteorite is significant because it demonstrates that 500 million years ago we may have had different meteorites falling to Earth than what we see today.

 

"Some may be extinct, whereas others, such as the L chondrites, still fall on Earth.

 

"Apparently there is potential to reconstruct important aspects of solar system history by looking down in Earth's sediments, in addition to looking up at the skies."