meteorites tagged posts

Researchers have discovered that carbonaceous chondrites, a class of meteorites, incorporated hydrated minerals along with organic material from the protoplanetary disk before the formation of planets. Scientists from the study published in the journal Space Science Reviews note that these meteorites played “an important role in the primordial Earth’s water enrichment” because they facilitated the transportation of volatile elements that were accumulated on the external regions of the so-called protoplanetary disk from which planets were formed more than 4.500 years ago. Earth was formed in an environment close to the Sun, very much reduced due to the relative lack of oxygen.

Carbonaceous chondrites come fro...

We can estimate the age of heavy elements in the primordial Solar System by measuring the traces left in meteorites by specific radioactive nuclei synthesized in certain types of supernovae.
Credit: NAOJ

An international team has proposed a new method to investigate the inner workings of supernovae explosions. This new method uses meteorites and is unique in that it can determine the contribution from electron anti-neutrinos, enigmatic particles which can’t be tracked through other means.

Supernovae are important events in the evolution of stars and galaxies, but the details of how the explosions occur are still unknown...

This is Jupiter’s southern hemisphere photographed by NASA’s Juno spacecraft.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/GeraldEichstaedt/Sean Doran

Researchers can now show how Jupiter was formed. Data collected from meteorites had indicated that the growth of the giant planet had been delayed for two million years. Now the researchers have found an explanation: Collisions with kilometer-sized blocks generated high energy, which meant that in this phase hardly any accretion of gas could take place and the planet could only grow slowly.

With an equator diameter of around 143,000 kilometers, Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and has 300 times the mass of the Earth. The formation mechanism of giant planets like Jupiter has been a hotly debated topic for several decades...

Schematic of the history of precipitation of moganite and subsurface H2O ice in the Moon. Credit: Masahiro Kayama and M. Sasaoka (SASAMI-GEO-SCIENCE)

A team of researchers led by Masahiro Kayama of Tohoku University has found evidence in a lunar meteorite that water once existed on the moon. In their paper published on the open access site Science Advances, the team describes their study of the meteorite and why they believe it offers evidence of water on the moon. Water on the moon, some have suggested, would be valuable, because it could support a colony—or perhaps be used for other purposes, such as powering spacecraft. But thus far, efforts to find any below the surface in the more temperate regions have come up empty-handed...