According to scientists, the asteroid originated between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, not in the far reaches of the solar system as previously thought. This was reported by the press service of the German Institute for Solar System Studies.
Christoph Burkhard, a researcher at the German Institute for Solar System Studies, explained: “The results of this study surprised us greatly, and we had to completely reconsider the history of the formation of not only the Ryugu asteroid, but also all carbonaceous chondrites from the CI group, and it turned out that they are not guests from the far reaches.” However, they are strange “relatives” of other types of carbonaceous chondrites that arose at different times and in another way in the region of the protoplanetary disk.
The discovery was made by Burkhard and other planetary scientists led by Seiichiro Watanabe, science director of the Hayabusa 2 mission, while studying the isotopic composition of rock samples from the asteroid Ryugu. The first analysis of these samples, which was conducted two years ago, led planetary scientists to assume that the asteroid Ryugu and similar asteroids from the CI-chondrite group originated in the far reaches of the solar system, near the orbits of the planets Neptune and Uranus.
Planetary scientists tested this hypothesis by measuring the nickel isotope ratios in Ryugu and other chondrite asteroids. Scientists’ interest in this metal is due to the fact that its quantity in asteroid material, as well as the proportion of shares of its three isotopes, nickel-61, nickel-62, and nickel-64, depend on the location of the material that led to its appearance in the first two million years of the existence of the solar system. This makes it possible to precisely determine the location of the “home” of asteroids and determine whether they originated in different areas or in a single space region.
Scientists’ measurements unexpectedly showed that different types of chondrites were formed in a unique region of the solar system, which is located between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. In contrast, the isotopic anomalies that distinguish the CI chondrite from other similar asteroids have been shown to be related to the material of Ryugu and similar asteroids that contain dust grains unusually rich in nickel and iron.
According to Burkhard and his colleagues, these particles entered the asteroid material in the last stages of the existence of the protoplanetary disk, when most of the gas in it had already evaporated, and other types of chondrites had completed their formation. The scientists concluded that this explains differences in the isotopic composition and structure of different types of carbonaceous chondrites similar or not to the Ryugu asteroid.
It is noteworthy that the Japanese probe “Hayabusa 2” was launched into space in early December 2014 to study and collect samples from the asteroid Ryugu and transport them to Earth. He successfully carried out this mission in February 2019, and at the end of 2020 he delivered a capsule containing rock samples to Earth. Her first study confirmed that the planet Ryugu consists of the primordial material of the solar system from which the Earth and its other planets were formed.
Source: TASS
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2024-10-02 05:17:26
