[ad_1]
Scientists who search the seabed off the state of Washington found remains of a meteor that lit up the sky of the Pacific Northwest and splashed in March.
The Seattle Times reports that an eight-hour search at sea on Monday revealed two tiny fragments of molten rock.
NASA's cosmic dust warden, Mark Fries, says the fragments need to be examined more closely to confirm that they come from the meteor, but he is optimistic. He says that it is the first intentional search for meteorites at sea.
Meteorites are pieces of material left over from the formation of the solar system.
Associated Press
An eight-hour search on the seafloor off the coast of Washington on Monday revealed two tiny fragments of molten rock that scientists believe to be remnants of a meteor that exploded into a fireball.
The fragments need to be examined in more detail to confirm that they come from space, but the NASA scientist who leads the hunt is optimistic. "I could not be happier," Mark Fries, Conservative of NASA's Cosmic Dust. said Tuesday morning in a phone briefing of EV Nautilus, the non-profit ship that conducted the research. "It has been the experience of a lifetime."
If the discovery takes place, it will be the first time that anyone has recovered fragments of a known meteor from the bottom of the ocean.
"This is the first intentional search" Meteorites at Sea, "says Fries.
The fireball and sonic boom created when the meteor the size of a golf cart slammed in the Earth's atmosphere on the evening of March 7 were widely seen and heard along the Washington coast, about 2 tons of space rock survived the burning dive. meteorological radar, he followed the main impact zone up to half a mile in diameter about 16 miles from the coast
The crew of EV Nautilus used Submarine robots to suck up sediment samples They also used a shovel and a magnetic rod shaped for the mission of raking through the sediment for magnetic meteorites.
L & # 39 sample which contained the two fragments was the last of the day e, collected "The bottom of the sea was like a pool table and there was this little pit where there seemed to be something falling into it," said Fries
. the bottom of the sea about 300 feet deep was soft and muddy. Any big fragment of meteorite would have sank in the mud. Surface bumps of up to 12 feet also squeaked the water, which reduced visibility.
The two pieces of rock are about 2 to 3 millimeters in diameter. Fries have said that they are probably melting crust – a melted layer like pottery glaze that forms in the blast furnace heat of the descent of a meteor in the atmosphere.
Fries hopes to analyze the composition of the fragments. The meteor was unusual because it was divided into several large fragments, indicating that it was composed of harder materials than any other space rock that Fries followed.
"You can explain this anomaly if the meteor is of a different composition than the normal and most common meteoric types and now we have samples in hand to test this hypothesis," he said.
Samples will be donated to the Smithsonian Institution, which houses the National Meteorite Collection. But since they only appear to be pieces of crust and not entire meteorites, they may not be eligible for the official list of meteorites.
Meteorites are interesting for scientists because they are pieces of material.
When he returns to his laboratory at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Fries plans to screen sediment samples for smaller pieces of space rock.
"I am sure we will find more than two small fragments," he said.
[ad_2]
Source link
