In 2008, something unique fell out of the sky over Sudan, spreading across fragments in the vast and arid regions of the Nubian Desert.
From above, this hurtful thing was known as Almahata Sita: a collection of about 600 meteorite fragments, which researchers worked hard to recover, and got its name – ‘Station Six’ – from a nearby railway station.
What is special about Almahata Sita is that it represents something unprecedented in astronomy: for the first time, the effect of a planet was successfully predicted by scientists.
Since then, small parts of that asteroid – called the 2008 TC3 – have been analyzed by researchers looking for the chemical key to the origin of this mysterious, distant visitor.
Now, a new study reveals an interesting back-story.
AHS 202 Shard. (Muawiyah Shaddad)
By looking at the smaller parts, he can tell us about the 2008 TC3, which in turn can tell us where the TC3 itself came from – like the astronomical chain of a maze of Maastryoshka osh fingers.
“Our surprising result suggests the existence of a huge, water-rich parent body,” says Vicky Hamilton, first author and planetary geologist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
In the new work, there was not much to work with Hamilton and fellow researchers, just an analysis of the smallest of these significant space stone sleeves.
“We were allocated a 50-mg sample of Almahata Sita to study,” explains Hamilton. “We mounted and polished the small shard and used an infrared microscope to examine its composition.”
Descriptive analysis revealed something that global scientists did not expect to find. Inside the shard – a fragment called AHS202 – was found an extremely rare form of hydrated crystals, known as amphibians.
This mineral type requires long-term formation of extreme heat and pressure, which is not generally considered possible in a type of carbonaceous chondrite (CC) meteorite.
In orange, micrograph showing amphibious crystals. (NASA / USRA / Lunar and Planetary Organization)
The suggestion suggests that the 2008 TC3 was largely associated with a very large body at one time – something so large that it would be in a virtually Ceres-like class: the dwarf planet, representing the largest known object in the solar system. The main asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
The authors stated in their paper that “most CC parent bodies are considered to be less than 100 km in diameter, and may not be large enough to produce the range of pressure and temperature conditions introduced by the Mineral Assembly in AHS 202,” the authors said in their paper. .
“Thus, our interpretation is that the original parent body of the AHS 202 was probably an unknown object object, possibly Ceres-Size (640-11,800 km in diameter under most conditions).”
While this mysterious, giant planet is no longer believed to exist, the fact that it once inhabited our solar system suggests that most of it, presumably, could have done the same, however, No evidence of large, water-rich found. Corpses in meteorite fragments before 2008 TC3.
In the same way that asteroids Ryugu and Bennu are making some surprising revelations in the formation, the manifold splinters of the 2008 TC3 are proving that the total empty space rocks out more than currently imagined.
“We are not proposing that AHS202 is a spectral analog to Bennu or Ryugu; instead, AHS202 is a semicircular source of information about the content of the early solar system that is not represented by the entire meteorite in our collection,” the researchers concluded.
“The differences between its mineralogy and known CC meteorites suggest that unique specimens, such as AHS 202 (and other, non-CC meteorite xenoliths), may have critical missing links in our understanding of the diversity of parent asteroids.”
These findings are reported Nature astronomy.
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