chondrite meteorites tagged posts

Credit: Jean Lachat/University of Chicago Nicolas Dauphas, the Louis Block Professor in Geophysical Sciences, holds a chondrite meteorite that contains a puzzling mismatch in isotopic composition with Earth’s crust. The mismatch puzzles scientists because they long believed that Earth formed from planetary objects similar to meteorites. Dauphas and his colleagues present research this week in Nature that explains how this mismatch could have come about.

Chondrite meteorites contain a puzzling mismatch in isotopic composition with Earth’s crust. The mismatch puzzles scientists because they long believed that Earth formed from planetary objects similar to meteorites. For the past 10 years, scientists have been trying to understand why...

Craters on the surface of the asteroid 21 Lutetia. Credit: ESA

An international study reveals that asteroids have endured a multitude of impact strikes since their formation 4,565 million years ago. Scientists have reconstructed a timeline of these collisions using a physics-based model which reproduces the process through time, comparing its results with present-day information about chondrite meteorites.

The size distribution of the objects which make up the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter indicates that these asteroids have been struck by projectiles >20cm in size at least 100 million times. The resultant craters from these strikes are proportional to both the diameters and the velocities of these projectiles.

The information compiled on ordinary chondrites indicates that these m...