A fireball over Alberta last year caught the attention of astronomers and international stargazers, who made interesting discoveries regarding where the meteor came from, RT reports.
Astronomers and astronomers, led by scientists at the University of Western Ontario (or the University of Western Ontario) managed to capture images and video of a stony meteorite that shot through the sky in central Alberta like a spectacular fire, in 2021.
They have now shown that the fires ignited at the extremities of the planets orbiting the sun must have been made of rock, not ice, challenging ancient beliefs regarding how the planets moved.
At the edge of our solar system, and half of the nearby stars, is a collection of icy objects floating in space, called the Oort Cloud. tails.
Scientists have not yet found any material directly in the Oort Cloud, but everything found so far that has its origin is made of ice.
In fact, understanding the origin of our solar system relies on the fact that there are only icy bodies in these outer regions and certainly nothing made of rock.
And this opinion changed last year following observing a stone meteorite that flew in the sky over central Alberta in the form of a fireball, as scientists concluded, since then, that all signs indicate that the origin of the body was central. “The Oort Cloud”.
The findings are published in the journal Nature Astronomy, and Dennis Vida, a researcher in meteorite physics at the University of Western Ontario, said: “This discovery supports a completely different model for the formation of the solar system, and it is a model that supports the idea. Most of the rocks are icy bodies within the Oort Cloud, and this was not the case.
And all the previous rocks came from far from Earth, which made this body – which traveled a long distance – unexpected.
The cameras of the Fireball Global Observatory, which was developed in Australia and operated by the University of Alberta, saw rocks similar to “grapes” (regarding 2 kg), and using the tools of the Global Meteorite Network, scientists from the university. The Western Ontario team assumed that the ball was moving in a steady circle.
As it flew, the Alberta fireball descended deeper into the atmosphere than solid objects passing through similar paths, breaking like a fireball — evidence that it was made of rock.
In contrast, comets are soft snow balls mixed with dust that slowly evaporate as they approach the Sun, and the dust and gas inside them form a special tail that can stretch for millions of kilometers.