Scientists from Switzerland and Oman have recovered a meteorite freshly fallen into sultanate: she had been spotted on the images of four cameras. It is the second discovery of this type in which the Museum of Natural History of Bern (NMBE) participated.
Six cameras have been robbed on the sky of the Oman central desert since 2021 … and on December 23, 2023, a fireball was recorded by four of these instruments over a period of 3.3 seconds.
>> A furtive appearance:
On the basis of these images, scientists calculate the trajectory of the fragment fallen from space: “We must also calculate the influence of the wind to find the point of fall”, explains Professor Beda Hofmann, responsible for the Earth Sciences and curator of the mineralogy section and meteorites at the NMBE.
“There can be a deflection of a few kilometers. The light phase ends at 10 or 20 kilometers high and between 5 and 15 kilometers, there can be a lot of wind. We had two larger meteorites, but they fell into the sea, “he told Rtsinfo.
Less than 30 grams
And only 49 days later, the team finds the meteorite of 26.8 grams near an abandoned drilling site in the province of Al Wusta: “On our images, with the deceleration of the meteorite, we can infer His mass: for Raja, he had been estimated at 30 grams, “notes Beda Hofmann. Tests then confirmed that it was the meteorite recorded by the cameras. It was well in the elongated area of 300 meters to 2 kilometers identified by scientists: “Thanks to a very systematic walk, with five to seven people, we put a day and a half to spot it, which is relatively fast”.
This pebble comes from the asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter: it belongs to the rare group of Enstatite chondrites – scientifically classified in the EH3 category -, specifies the Bernese institution. This is a Primitive meteoriteconsidered as representative of the primordial material having formed the earth by accretion. Enstatite chondrites contain minerals that are not stable in the earth’s atmosphere rich in oxygen and humidity.
An unknown mineral
Raja – his official name referring to his point of fall – contains a mineral hitherto unknown: “He is not oxidized, because we found the meteorite very shortly after his arrival on earth”, notes the professor . “It is not very common to discover unknown minerals. There will be a publication about this in a few months.”
According to the museum, small meteorites represent the majority of those who reach the earth but, as they are difficult to find, they are rarely recovered: “Raja is an important contribution to our understanding of the overall flow of meteorites to earth”, concludes The museum in its press release.
-The data was recently presented at the Meteoritical Society and the find registered in Meteorite official register.
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Stéphanie Jaquet and ATS
