In 2019, scientists noticed, in a way they had never seen before, that an asteroid they named Bennu was scattering small rock fragments. A study published recently also tries to explain the reasons for this interesting phenomenon.
The tiny stones were observed by NASA’s Spectral Interpretation, Resourse Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-Rex) mission. Scientists investigating these small stones ejected from Bennu discovered that Aguas Zarcas, a space rock that crashed into Costa Rica in 2019, may be related to this process.
In space, large rocks such as asteroids or comets sometimes lose fragments the size of small pebbles. These pebbles usually then sink back to the surface or come together and fall to Earth as a meteorite. This process is exciting because researchers previously believed that only collisions with other rocks caused clouds of debris to form from small pebbles. However, a new study shows that asteroids and meteorites are much more likely to throw smaller pebbles than previously thought. This process could therefore have a major impact on the structure and structure of objects such as the asteroid Bennu.
Philip Heck of the University of Chicago and graduate student Xin Yang noticed that Aguas Zarcas did not decompose after being frozen in liquid nitrogen and thawed in warm water.
As is often the case, the discovery of researchers Philipp Heck and Xin Yang was more of a coincidence. In 2019, they studied the Aguas Zarcas meteorite, a rock that fell from the sky near the city of the same name in Costa Rica and was later donated to the museum. When the researchers tried to isolate the tiny minerals from the meteorite by altering freezing and thawing, they noticed small, compact, pebble-sized chunks that proved to be very stable.
In other words, they revealed that Aguas Zarcas contains stones protruding from other objects and that these stones are perfectly integrated with Zarcas.
The energy produced by the asteroids is enough to allow the stone chips to leave the surface. However, their orbit is disturbed and the stones fall back and cover the surface. Also, another blow seems to have turned the stone fragments that make up Aguas Zarcas into solid, unified rock.
This method “offers a new way to explain the way minerals mix on the surfaces of asteroids,” Yang said in a statement. “We expect this to happen with other meteorites as well,” Heck said. “It’s just that people haven’t looked for it yet.”
The duo’s research was published in Nature Astronomy…
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