 |
| This is mercury meteorite. |
The green rock found in Morocco last year may be the first known
visitor from the solar system's innermost planet, according to meteorite
scientist Anthony Irving, who unveiled the new findings this month at
the 44th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands,
Texas. The study suggests that a space rock called NWA 7325 came from
Mercury (Read details about Mercury) , and not an asteroid or Mars.
 |
| Read detail about Mercury Planet. |
NWA 7325 is actually a
group of 35 meteorite samples discovered in 2012 in Morocco. They are
ancient, with Irving and his team dating the rocks to an age of about
4.56 billion years.
"It might be a sample from Mercury, or it
might be a sample from a body smaller than Mercury but [which] is like
Mercury," Irving said during his talk. A large impact could have shot
NWA 7325 out from Mercury to Earth, he added.
Irving is an Earth and Space Sciences professor at the University of
Washington and has been studying meteorites for years. But the NWA 7325
meteorite is unlike anything found on Earth before, he told SPACE.com.
Meteorites from Mars
are imbued with some Martian atmosphere, making them somewhat simple to
tell apart from other rocks. Space rocks from Vesta, one of the largest
asteroids in the solar system, are also chemically distinct, but NWA
7325 does not resemble any space rock documented by scientists today.
“Jake Matijevic was first of all a gentleman,” Gellert said. “He
had done a lot of work for all the Martian rovers that were starting
with Pathfinder. He passed away a couple of weeks after Curiosity’s
landing so the rock was named after him.” Read full articles here
Advertisement
0 comments:
Post a Comment