Below we tell you the fascinating story of the Allende meteorite
We realize that you already know the difference between an asteroid, a comet, and a meteorite, but what you probably didn't know is that On the ground Owns Examples of objects Which once belonged to the solar system, but that They ended up arriving Until the Surface planet, helping us understand more about the cosmic neighborhood in which we live.
Discovery of the Allende meteorite
It was in the early hours of the day February 8, 1969as stated by Juan Esteban García, Director of the Department of Mines, Mineralogy and Geology at UNAM's Geology Museum, between 01:05 and 01:10 when A meteorite fell Very close to Allende cityIt is located in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.
It is believed that the asteroid that ended up becoming the Allende meteorite had Car size When you are traveling through space Outside and he did it in Speed From around 15 kilometers per second.
#Did you know?
During the early hours of February 8, 1969, in the municipality of Allende, in the state of Chihuahua, the Allende meteorite was recorded. It has been proven that it came from the orbits of Jupiter, and its age has been estimated at 4570 million years. It is displayed in @Museo de Geology pic.twitter.com/z16D1J8Czv– Quadrate Plastic (@QuadratePlastic) February 8, 2024
We are talking about a meteor Which falls into a group Carboniferous chondrites And the? It reached the ground in tons From materials recovered over decades.
This was the amount Recovered materials It has become so Report from the prestigious institution El Colegio Nacionalin general Global event. Jaime Urrutia Fukugauchi, a researcher at the UNAM Institute of Geophysics, confirms that:
There was a meteorite being distributed in many laboratories around the world, thus becoming the most studied meteorite in history, generating nearly 3 thousand scientific articles since then, but new ones continue to appear every year.
#Did you know? A day like today, but in 1969.
At 01:05 local time, a meteorite fell in a town #AllendeIt is estimated that before the meteorite, which weighed seven tons, crashed, it entered the atmosphere in the form of a large fireball and split into several pieces at… pic.twitter.com/uJlcjA4jks
-Northern Nation (@NacionNortena) February 8, 2024
One of the great discoveries Made of meteorite fragments to verify this to express Out Mineral impurities rich in calcium and aluminum. We're talking about one of The oldest materials in the solar system Which has been dated to be 2000 million years older than the sun itself.
Also thanks to this meteorite, we were able to go Forming a mental image Than it used to be The molecular cloud that existed before from U.S Solar System. It is known that before the birth of the Sun, a supernova exploded near its location, which could be the origin of everything in our star system.
And this is not the most wonderful thing. in Article published in arXiv In 2020, it was revealed that… Protein fragments In the Allende meteorite, it also appears in the Acfer 086 meteorite, which can be classified as The first extraterrestrial protein Which we were able to monitor.