Astronomers from SETI Institute, NASA’s Ames Research Center, and Curtin University have tracked the impact orbits of 75 observed metstone waterfalls to previously unidentified source regions of several of the main asteroid belt.
Impressions of an artist on a rocky asteroid. Image credits: Mark A. Garlick, Space-Art.co.uk / Warwick University / Cambridge University.
“This is a 10-year detective story, with each recorded metstone waterfall providing new clues,” said Dr. Peter Jenniskens, an astronomer at Seti Institute and NASA’s Ames Research Center.
“We currently have the first overview of the asteroid belt geological map.”
Ten years ago, Dr. Jenniskens and his colleagues were aiming to build a network of all ski cameras in California and Nevada.
“Others built similar networks that spanned the world, and together formed a fireball observatory around the world,” said Hadrian Devillepova, an astronomer at Curtin University.
“For many years, we have tracked the routes of 17 recovered metstone waterfalls.”
“More fireballs have been tracked by doorbells and dashcam video cameras from citizen scientists and other dedicated networks around the world.”
“Overall, this quest produced 75 laboratory classified metstones with impact trajectories tracked by video cameras and photo cameras,” Dr. Jennis Kens said.
“It has proven sufficient to start seeing some patterns in the direction of metstones approaching the Earth.”
Most metstones come from the asteroid belt, the region between Mars and Jupiter.
These rocks come from a few larger asteroids that have been broken in the collision.
Even today, asteroids collide and create remnant fields within these asteroid families known as clusters.
“We can see that the 12 metstones (h-cartilage) of ordinary chondrites, which are now rich in iron, come from a debris field called low colonies on the pristine main belt,” Dr. Jennis Kens said.
“These metstones arrived from low-coupled orbital periods that match this debris field.”
“By measuring the age of cosmic ray exposure in metstones, we can determine that three of these 12 metstones originate from kalin clasters of dynamic ages of 5.8 million years, and two come from Koronis2 clusters of dynamic ages of 100-15 million years.”
“Another metstone can measure the age of Koronis3 clusters, about 83 million years.”
The authors also discovered a group of H-chondrites on steep orbits that appear to originate from the Nere Asteroididae in the central main belt, with a dynamic age of approximately 6 million years.
The mean motion resonance with nearby 3:1 Jupiter can raise the slope to the observed people.
A third group of H cartilage with an exposure age of approximately 35 million years of age emerged from the medial main belt.
“In our opinion, these H-cartilages came from the low masalia asteroids on the inner main belt, as their families have clusters of that same dynamic era,” Dr. Jennis Kens said.
“Asteroid (20) Masalia, the asteroid that created the cluster, is a parent body of the H-chondrite type.”
Researchers have discovered that low iron (l cartilage) and very low iron (LL chondrite) metstones mainly come from the inner main belt.
“I propose that L cartilage comes from the Hertha Asteroid family, just above the Masalia family,” Dr. Jennis Kens said.
“The asteroid Elsa doesn’t look like its fragments. Hertha is covered in dark rocks of shock black, which exhibits unusually violent collisions. The L-chondrites experienced a very violent origin 468 million years ago, when these metstones bombarded the Earth with numbers found in geological records.”
Knowing from the remains of the asteroid belt, the birth of our metstones is important for our planetary defense efforts against asteroids on the near Earth.
The orbits of approaching asteroids can provide clues to the origin of the asteroid belt, just like the metstone orbit.
“Asteroids near Earth do not arrive in the same orbit as Metstones because it takes time for them to evolve into Earth,” Dr. Jennis Kens said.
“But they come from some of the same Astide family.”
Team’s paper Published in the journal Weather and Planetary Science.
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Peter Jenniskens & Hadrien ar Devillepoix. Asteroids, meteors, and meteor-shaped link reviews. Weather and Planetary SciencePublished online on March 17th, 2025. doi:10.1111/maps.14321
Source: www.sci.news
