(ORDO NEWS) — A new analysis of the Winchcombe meteorite has shown how quickly space rocks that have fallen to Earth can be polluted by our atmosphere.
Winchcombe is the first meteorite found in the UK in 30 years. Its fragments were found in the driveway of a Gloucestershire apartment building last February.
This happened just a few hours after he entered the Earth’s atmosphere. Several more pieces were found in the field six days after the fall.
The results of the study show that the discovered fragments quickly formed several “terrestrial phases” – salts and minerals, formed as a result of the interaction of the surfaces of meteorite fragments with the humid environment in which they landed.
The study is published in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science. The lead author of the article is Laura Jenkins, PhD student at the University of Glasgow.
The team of scientists used scanning electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy to closely examine the surfaces of the samples.
One sample was taken from the driveway and the other from fragments found in the field.
The researchers determined that two forms of salt calcium sulfate and calcite formed on the melted bark of specimens recovered from the field. In a sample taken from the driveway, the researchers found halite.
Thermonuclear crust is a special material formed during the melting of meteorites during their entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Scientists believe that since sulfates formed on the outside of the crust, it is likely that they appeared after the meteorite landed.
Meanwhile, the halite appeared only on the surface of the polished sections of the fragment from the driveway.
Since the polishing was done after the extraction of the meteorite, it is likely that the salt was formed as a result of the interaction of a piece of rock with humid laboratory air.
The Winchcombe meteorite is often described as an example of a “primordial” meteorite. However, we have shown through this study that there really is no such thing as a primordial meteorite.
The change begins the moment a meteorite hits Earth’s atmosphere, and we can see it in the samples we analyzed just a couple of months after it hit.
This shows how meteorites react to our atmosphere, and how careful we have to be with these kinds of earth changes when analyzing meteorites,” Jenkins said.
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