A researcher at The Open University (OU), Ben Rider-Stokes, has investigated a unique, vivid, green meteorite classified as Northwest Africa (NWA) 8535.
This sample is part of a distinct group of meteorites originating from an asteroid/planet that no longer exists in the modern-day Solar System known as angrites (which formed 4,564 million years ago).
Usually, we can identify the origin of a meteorite based on laboratory spectral analyses and compare them to asteroids and planets. Yet nothing, other than a tiny asteroid near Mars, has similar spectral properties to angrites.
The team of international experts analysed the age of this unique sample and uncovered the youngest age for an angrite meteorite (4,514 +/- 30 million years).
This age suggests the parent body existed in the Solar System for at least around 50 million years, a much longer period than previously expected for this group of meteorites.
Analyses by another group of scientists have suggested that the parent body of this sample was large, and possibly even the same size as the Moon! This ‘young’ age for this unique green meteorite supports the suggestion of prolonged magmatism on a relatively large parent body.
This work implies that the body from which the angrites originate may have been a large planet that existed for 50 million years in the Solar System. The real question now is where did this large body go?
Ben commented:
‘During my research we were undertaking routine age dating of samples, however, when I received the age of this unique sample I was shocked and excited over the very unique and youngest ever recorded age for angrite meteorites! It could well suggest the asteroid from which it came from was very large, allowing in high temperatures to be retained for millions of years!’
In May, Ben also published research providing fascinating new insight into the formation and migration of Jupiter.
You can read more about Ben’s newest research at Meteoritics and Planetary Science, ‘The Impact History and Prolonged Magmatism of the Angrite Parent Body’. DOI: 10.1111/maps.14102
