2023-04-17 19:01:11
17.04.2023
Scientists hoped that the Black Beauty meteorite would answer important questions regarding the magnetic field that is believed to have once protected the Martian atmosphere. But all his information had been erased.
Meteorites are a source of vital information that can help us unlock the oldest mysteries of our Solar System. And it is that, even in the era of roving vehicles In mars and asteroid probes, often the information we can draw From Meteors, stored magnetically, we can’t get them anywhere else.
Now, meteorite hunters and dealers who use handheld magnets, a popular and easy method of validating whether or not a piece of rock is a meteorite, and what type of meteorite it is, have been guilty of having this invaluable information locked away in their interior has been inadvertently erased.
Meteorito marciano Black Beauty
This was the case of the meteorite known as Black Beauty (Black Beauty or NWA 7034), recovered from the desert sands of Morocco in 2011, which contained crystals that formed on Mars more than 4,400 million years ago, and whose information has disappeared .
According to scientific media reports, this is what Jérôme Gattacceca, a paleomagnetist at the European Center for Research and Education in Environmental Geosciences, discovered, hoping to understand more regarding the now-defunct Martian magnetic field, which might have helped the planet support life.
“Meteors provide invaluable records of planetary formation and evolution. Studies of its paleomagnetism have made it possible to determine accretion in the protoplanetary disk, thermal evolution and the differentiation of planetesimals, as well as the history of planetary dynamos. However, the potential of these magnetic records to advance the field of planetary science is severely hampered by a widely used technique: the application of handheld magnets to aid in the classification of meteorites,” he writes in their study, published in the journal Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, a team led by planetary scientist Foteini Vervelidou of MIT.
“Touching a meteorite with a magnet causes almost instantaneous destruction of its magnetic record,” they added.
Raising awareness among hunters, collectors and researchers
Vervelidou hopes the study will help educate hunters, collectors and researchers to renounce a method promoted by the US Geological Survey and universities. “It’s like destroying a unique piece”, declared Vervelidou to Science. “Why would you buy an amazing painting and then pour sauce on it?”
Beyond putting up the warning to preserve this unique information, the researchers calculated how magnets of different strengths might alter a meteorite’s magnetic records as they approached the rock. And the results revealed how the magnet readjusts the fields from the outside in.
This helped the researchers calculate how deep they would have to cut to find a pure sample. “We are now 100 percent sure, if we weren’t already, that this is what is happening,” said Ben Weiss, a co-author of the study and a planetary scientist at MIT.
Magnetic Susceptibility Meters
Looking ahead, scientists hope that hunters and traders will begin to use more sophisticated techniques, which already exist, that can help identify meteorites without destroying the sensitive internal information.
“Many studies have shown that the use of magnetic susceptibility gauges is an accurate and non-destructive technique for meteorite identification and classification. They can be used not only to distinguish between meteorites and terrestrial rocks, but also to distinguish between different types of meteorites,” the researchers write.
“We remain hopeful that more NWA 7034 paired stones and new finds of Martian meteorites that are free from the effects of magnetic remagnetization will become available in the near future.”
Edited by Felipe Espinosa Wang.
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