Scientists Challenge Theory of Massive Comet or Meteorite Hit to Wipe out Mammoth

A 16-member research team from the United States, Britain and Belgium has challenged the hotly disputed theory that a massive comet or meteorite struck a glacier-encased Hudson Bay about 13,000 years ago.

The theory suggested that the impact was so strong that it wiped out the mammoths and other Ice Age megafauna. Moreover, it destroyed the first major wave of human migration in the new world.

The research team published their major study in February and said that there us a lack of clear evidence to prove that a four-kilometer-wide comet exploded across the Laurentide Ice Sheet that covered ancient Canada.

"No impact craters of the appropriate size and age are known and no unambiguously shocked material or other features diagnostic of impact have been found to prove the theory", the authors stated in monograph published by the American Geophysical Union

They said that the proponents are trying to explain the climatological, paleontological and archeological events that are not unique and do not require and impact. For example, layers of so-called shocked rocks and minerals are suggested by the theory to have transformed by an earth-shaking mega-blast.

However, a team of 29 scientists from the U. S., Mexico, the Netherlands, Germany and the Czech Republic contradicted the February findings in a new, pro-impact study published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.



Source: FrenchTribune.com

Mars Meteorite May Fetch $160,000 At Auction

A meteorite that originated on Mars is expected to fetch at least $160,000 when it hits the auction block June 2 as part of a collection of rare geological specimens.

The Martian meteorite NWA 7397 was found in 2012 in Morocco's Sahara Desert. Scientists think it was part of a chunk of Mars that was chipped from the planet when an asteroid impacted it. At 1.37 lbs (0.62 kg), the sample going up for sale is the larger portion of themeteorite that landed on Earth; the rest of that rock was recently bought by a museum, according to Heritage Auctions, which is handling the sale.

Meteorites that came from Mars are incredibly rare — less than 300 pounds of them in total are known to exist on Earth. They tend to fetch higher prices than other types of meteorites, which usually originate from outer space, and sometimes the moon. The largest lunar meteorite ever auctioned, the4-lb (1.8 kg) Dar al Gani 1058 specimen, sold for $330,000 in an October 2012 Heritage Auction sale.

The NWA 7397 meteorite is going on sale as part of a large collection of meteorites, fossils, and insects preserved in amber.

"The specimens in this sale represent some of the finest fossils, meteorites, and natural history items I have had the privilege to handle," Craig Kissick, associate director of nature and science for Heritage Auctions, said in a statement. "This auction will appeal to everyone fascinated by natural history and truly has something for everyone — even those new to this collecting genre."

Some other meteorites on sale in the collection are also expected to fetch high prices. Another meteorite found in the Sahara Desert of Morocco, classified as a chondrite meteorite, should sell for at least $15,000, experts say. At 19.57 lbs (8.9 kg), that specimen is much larger than the Martian meteorite, and features the largest example of gem-like olivine crystals ever collected, embedded in a silver nickel-ore matrix. A third space rock, a 16.86-lb (7.6 kg) muonionalusta iron meteorite, has been carved and polished into a "modern work of art," according to Heritage Auctions, and should bring in at least $18,000.

Other prizes going up at auction include a tuft of wooly mammoth wool 16 inches long (41 cm) that dates from the Pleistocene epoch (expected to sell for $400), and a prehistoric specimen of amber (fossilized tree sap) that caught two tiny midges in the act of copulation (estimated at $300).




Source: space.com

Another meteorite hits house in Connecticut, USA

A small meteorite landed on a house in Waterbury, Connecticut on Wednesday.

Experts from the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History say the meteorite crashed through the gutter and landed on the lawn below. It was about the size and shape of an avocado and weighs 1.6 pounds.

The homeowner contacted Dr. Stefan Nicolescu, mineralogy collections manager at the Peabody Museum, who had also confirmed the identity of the Wolcott meteorite from last month.

"It's not very often that this happens, that in one meteorite shower two or more buildings are hit at the same time," Dr. Nicolescu told WTNH (http://bit.ly/13mfpMX). "These are rather rare occurrences so that's what actually makes this event so much more interesting than a regular meteorite find or a regular meteorite fall." All but one of the reported meteorite falls in Connecticut have occurred in towns beginning with the letter "W," Weston and Wethersfield.

Last month, a baseball-sized meteorite crashed into a Wolcott house damaging a roof and the attic. Area police reported that several residents reported hearing loud booms that night.

The town of Wethersfield makes Connecticut history by having two meteorites hit two separate homes between 1971 - 1982. Remarkably in both cases, the homes were occupied when the meteorites came crashing through the ceilings and no one was injured.

One of the most notable metrorites fell on Dec. 14, 1807. Although it is called the "Weston meteorite," most of it fell in what is now Easton, which was founded in 1845 from 28.8 square miles carved out of Weston. Today it's believed that none or almost none of the pieces fell in present-day Weston, although pieces were found in a swath that extended from Monroe to Fairfield.

The object was sufficiently bright to illuminate fields and barns, and there were reports of something strange streaking across the sky from as far away as Rutland, Vt. The meteor broke up as it slammed into the earth's atmosphere at about 65,000 mph. Soon it seemed that Weston was a target of an artillery barrage, as dozens of rocks, one weighing 200 pounds, augered into the snow-covered fields.

According to a book by Cathryn J. Prince, of Weston, "A Professor, a President, and a Meteor: The Birth of American Science," the meteorite provided the spark that over time turned the new nation, then populated largely by people who believed in the supernatural, into a scientific powerhouse.

WTNH, News Channel 8, contributed to this story.

Source: CTPOST.COM

An Animation Of Every Recorded Meteorite Blast In History

Earth is bombarded all the time by space rocks, but people rarely notice them--only 1,042 have ever been seen falling. People didn’t start recording these impacts until a couple hundred years ago, and then suddenly, they noticed all the time.

Data designer Carlo Zapponi has a lovely new animation, Bolides, showing all these recorded impacts, along with every known meteorite fall--most of which weren’t seen when they happened. The information comes from The Meteorite Bulletin, which is maintained by the Nomenclature Committee of the Meteoritical Society. The word "bolide" comes from the Greek word for missile, and is used to describe bright fireballs.

The database doesn't yet include the giant Chelyabinsk meteorite, which fell over Russia earlier this year. But it's still fun to explore meteorite falls by size and watch Earth get bombarded through time. Go here to see the animation for yourself.:  http://bolid.es/

http://bolid.es/

Meteorite Crashes Into House: Softball Size Rock Breaks Through Roof, Ceiling

A homeowner in Connecticut initially believed that it was a broken rafter that caused a loud bang in his home on Friday night, but on Saturday he discovered something that appeared to be a rock that had travelled straight through his roof.

"It sounded like a gunshot but it was a louder bang," Larry Beck, a resident in Wolcott, Connecticut told the local news channel. "We looked up and saw the ceiling coming down and it broke away the sheet rock in the dining room."

After hearing the loud noise, Beck assumed that a rafter or joint had broken. It wasn't until Saturday morning that he went to inspect what might have caused the noise. What he found was a hole in his roof.

The object that caused the hole has been described as being the size of a softball, and appears to be a rock. But given the amount of damage, Beck thought this couldn't be just any rock. Beck alerted the local authorities.

"For this to crash through asphalt shingles, the roof, smash copper pipe, crack a ceiling, it was moving very quickly," said Wolcott police Chief Edward Stephens.

Officials have now confirmed that instead of being a rock, the large softball sized object was actually a meteorite.



"Stefan Nicolescu, the collections manager for the Mineralogy Division at the Yale Peabody Museum, confirmed that the dense and blackened rock was indeed from outer space," according to the Daily News.

Several other residents in Becks area had also placed calls to 911 on Friday evening, before the meteorite hit Beck's home. They claimed to have hear a loud boom.

"The sound might have been the space rock exploding into smaller bits when passing through the Earth's atmosphere" the Daily News reported.

Luckily, no one was home when the meteorite hit Beck's home.

"My wife says it can only happen to us," Beck told NBC.

Source: christianpost.com

Grains of sand from ancient supernova found in meteorites

The supernova may have been the one that triggered the formation of the solar system

NASA/JPL-CALTECH/ O. KRAUSE (STEWARD OBSERVATORY)

In 2007 NASA’s Spitzer space telescope found the infrared signature of silica (sand) in the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A. The light from this exploding star first reached Earth in the 1600s. The cyan dot just off center is all that remains of the star that exploded.

It’s a bit like learning the secrets of the family that lived in your house in the 1800s by examining dust particles they left behind in cracks in the floorboards.

By looking at specks of dust carried to earth in meteorites, scientists are able to study stars that winked out of existence long before our solar system formed.

This technique for studying the stars – sometimes called astronomy in the lab — gives scientists information that cannot be obtained by the traditional techniques of astronomy, such as telescope observations or computer modeling.

Now scientists working at Washington University in St. Louis with support from the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences, have discovered two tiny grains of silica (SiO2; the most common constituent of sand) in primitive meteorites. This discovery is surprising because silica is not one of the minerals expected to condense in stellar atmospheres — in fact, it has been called ‘a mythical condensate.’

Five silica grains were found earlier, but, because of their isotopic compositions, they are thought to originate from AGB stars, red giants that puff up to enormous sizes at the end of their lives and are stripped of most of their mass by powerful stellar winds.

These two grains are thought to have come instead from a core-collapse supernova, a massive star that exploded at the end of its life.

Because the grains, which were found in meteorites from two different bodies of origin, have spookily similar isotopic compositions, the scientists speculate in the May 1 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, that they may have come from a single supernova, perhaps even the one whose explosion is thought to have triggered the formation of the solar system.

A summary of the paper will also appear in the Editors’ Choice compilation in the May 3 issue of Science magazine.

The first presolar grains are discovered


Until the 1960s most scientists believed the early solar system got so hot that presolar material could not have survived.

But in 1987 scientists at the University of Chicago discovered miniscule diamonds in a primitive meteorite (ones that had not been heated and reworked). Since then they’ve found grains of more than ten other minerals in primitive meteorites.

Many of these discoveries were made at Washington University, home to Ernst Zinner, PhD, research professor in Physics at Washington University in St. Louis, who helped develop the instruments and techniques needed to study presolar grains (and the last author on the paper).

The scientists can tell these grains came from ancient stars because they have highly unusual isotopic signatures. (Isotopes are different atoms of the same chemical element that have a slightly different mass.)

Different stars produce different proportions of isotopes. But the material from which our solar system was fashioned was mixed and homogenized before the solar system formed. So all of the planets and the Sun have the pretty much the same isotopic composition, known simply as “solar.”

Meteorites, most of which are pieces of asteroids, have the solar composition as well, but trapped deep within the primitive ones are pure samples of stars. The isotopic compositions of these presolar grains provide clues to the complex nuclear and convective processes operating within stars, which are poorly understood.

Even our nearby Sun is still a mystery to us; much less more exotic stars that are incomprehensibly far away.

Some models of stellar evolution predict that silica could condense in the cooler outer atmospheres of stars but others predict silicon would be completely consumed by the formation of magnesium- or iron-rich silicates, leaving none to form silica.

But in the absence of any evidence, few modelers even bothered to discuss the condensation of silica in stellar atmospheres. “We didn’t know which model was right and which was not, because the models had so many parameters,” said Pierre Haenecour, a graduate student in Earth and Planetary Sciences, who is the first author on the paper.

The first silica grains are discovered

In 2009 Christine Floss, PhD, research professor of physics at Washington University in St. Louis, and Frank Stadermann, PhD, since deceased, found the first silica grain in a meteorite. Their find was followed within the next few years by the discovery of four more grains.

All of these grains were enriched in oxygen-17 relative to solar. “This meant they had probably come from red giant or AGB stars” Floss said.

When Haenecour began his graduate study with Floss, she had him look at a primitive meteorite that had been picked up in Antarctica by a U.S. team. Antarctica is prime meteorite-hunting-territory because the dark rocks show up clearly against the white snow and ice.

Haenecour with the NanoSIMS 50 ion microprobe he used to look for presolar grains in a primitive meteorite. The silica grain he found is too small to be seen with the unaided eye, but the microprobe can magnify it 20,000 times, to about the size of a chocolate chip.

Haenecour found 138 presolar grains in the meteorite slice he examined and to his delight one of them was a silica grain, But this one was enriched in oxygen-18, which meant it came from a core-collapse supernova, not a red giant.

He knew that another graduate student in the lab had found a silica grain rich in oxygen-18. Xuchao Zhao, now a scientist at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics in Beijing, China, found his grain in a meteorite picked up in Antarctica by the Chinese Antarctic Research Expedition.

With two specks to go on, Haenecour tackled the difficult problem of calculating how a supernova might have produced silica grains. Before it explodes, a supernova is a giant onion, made up of concentric layers dominated by different elements.

Some theoretical models predicted that silica might be produced in massive oxygen-rich layers near the core of the supernova. But if silica grains could condense there, Haenecour and his colleagues thought, they should be enriched in oxygen-16, not oxygen-18.

They found they could reproduce the oxygen-18 enrichment of the two grains by mixing small amounts of material from the oxygen-rich inner zones and the oxygen-18-rich helium/carbon zone with large amounts of material from the hydrogen envelope of the supernova.

In fact, Haenecour said, the mixing needed to produce the composition of the two grains was so similar that the grains might well come from the same supernova. Could it have been the supernova whose explosion is thought to have kick-started the collapse of the molecular cloud out of which the planets of the solar system formed?

How strange to think that two tiny grains of sand could be the humble bearers of such momentous tidings from so long ago and so far away.

Source: Washington University in St. Louis

Green Meteorite's Age Casts Doubt on Possible Mercury Origin

A strange green space rock hailed as perhaps the first meteorite ever discovered from Mercury may be too old to have come from the solar system's innermost planet, some scientists say.


Last month, scientists announced that the green-hued meteorite NWA 7325 shares many chemical similarities with Mercury, suggesting it may be the first known visitor from the small, sun-scorched planet.


But NWA 7325's advanced age — it's thought to be more than 4.5 billion years old — casts some doubt on this interpretation, some scientists have stressed, citing the example of Earth's moon to help make their point.

"The moon began to crystallize 4.5 billion years ago, but we don't have any 4.5-billion-year-old meteorites from the moon, because all of those rocks would have been bashed to smithereens during the Late Heavy Bombardment that pockmarked the moon with craters between 4 to 3.8 billion years ago," meteorite expert Randy Korotev, of Washington University in St. Louis, said in a statement.

“The same thing would have happened on Mercury, so the question is, How did this rock survive for that long?" Korotev added. "There's no sign of it being brecciated, or busted up."

Still, Korotev doesn't rule out the possibility that NWA 7325, which was found in Morocco last year, is indeed from Mercury. Further tests could help researchers get a better sense of the meteorite's origins, he added.

A test with the potential to be particularly informative would assess NWA 7325's levels of "cosmogenic radionuclides," unstable atoms generated by exposure to cosmic radiation.

"If this stone had exceedingly high cosmogenic nuclides, that would be an argument for it coming from Mercury, because Mercury is so close to the sun," Korotev said.

While NWA 7325's exact provenance remains unclear at the moment, scientists do know something about its origins. The meteorite is an achondrite, a relatively rare type of space rock that comes from a planet or big asteroid — something large that generated enough internal heat early in its history to melt partially, producing a metallic core surrounded by rock.

And researchers have a pretty good idea of where its green color comes from.

"I once analyzed bottles to see what made them blue or green," Korotev said. "The greenest bottle had 660 parts per million chromium, but some of the mineral components of NWA 7325 have 7,000 parts per million chromium. That's why it's green."

Source: space.com