It fits easily in the hand, and weighs just over 300 grams (10.6 ounces).
Paris France:
Scientists announced Tuesday that they have found the crater from which the oldest known Martian meteorite smashed toward Earth, a discovery that might provide clues to how our planet was formed.
The meteorite NWA 7034, nicknamed the Black Beauty, has impressed geologists since its discovery in the Sahara Desert in 2011.
It fits easily in the hand, weighs just over 300 grams (10.6 ounces), and contains a blend of materials including zircon, which dates back nearly 4.5 billion years.
“This makes it one of the oldest studied rocks in the history of geology,” a planetary scientist at the University of Paris-Saclay, Sylvain Bouly, told AFP.
Its journey dates back to the beginning of the solar system, “regarding 80 million years following the planets began forming,” said Polly, who co-authored a new study on the meteorite.
Polly said that plate tectonics long ago covered the ancient Earth’s crust, which means we’ve “lost this primitive history of our planet.”
But he added that Black Beauty might offer an “open book regarding the planet’s first moments”.
To open this book, a team of researchers at Australia’s Curtin University set out to find the original meteorite habitat on Mars.
They knew that it was likely that an asteroid hitting the Red Planet had sent Black Beauty into space.
The impact “had enough force to eject rocks at a very high speed – more than five kilometers (three miles) per second – to escape the gravity of Mars,” said Curtin Anthony Lagen, lead author of the study in Nature Communications. France Press agency.
This hole must be huge – at least three kilometers in diameter.
Problem The blistered surface of Mars contains at least 80,000 craters this size.
Follow the clues
But the researchers had a clue: By measuring Black Beauty’s exposure to cosmic rays, they knew it was displaced from its first home regarding five million years ago.
“So, we were looking for a hole that was really small and big,” said Lakin.
Another clue is that its formation showed that it was suddenly heated up regarding 1.5 million years ago – most likely due to the impact of a second asteroid.
The team then created an algorithm and used a supercomputer to search through images of 90 million craters taken by a NASA satellite.
This narrowed it down to 19 holes, allowing researchers to rule out remaining suspects.
They found that Black Beauty was dug up from its first home by an asteroid that struck regarding 1.5 billion years ago, forming the 40-kilometer-long Khugert Crater.
Then, a few million years ago, another asteroid not far away collided, causing the 10-kilometre Karratha crater and shooting the Black Beauty towards Earth.
The region in the southern hemisphere of Mars is rich in the elements potassium and thorium, just like Black Beauty.
Another factor is that Black Beauty is the only highly magnetized Martian meteorite.
“The area where Karratha was found is the most attractive on Mars,” Lakin said.
The study, known as the Terra Cimmeria-Serinum Province, said it is “a remnant of early cortical processes on Mars, and is therefore an area of great interest for future missions.”
Polley noted a “bias” in currently planned trips to Mars in favor of searching for signs of water and life.
But understanding how planets first formed will answer some basic questions, Lajean said, including “how Earth became such an extraordinary planet in the universe.”
(This story has not been edited by the NDTV crew and is automatically generated from a shared feed.)
