The space rocks that pierceed the houses of Georgia residents earlier this summer could be over 20 million years longer than our planet, researchers say.
Met stones were striped across the sky as fireballs on June 26th. Researchers at the University of Georgia (UGA) have studied materials recovered from the house and discovered that metstones were formed about 4.56 billion years ago, making it more than 20 million years ago than Earth.
“This particular meteor that we’ve come to like has a long history before we reach the McDonough site,” Scott Harris, a researcher at UGA’s Faculty of Geology, said in a statement.
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Harris’ analysis reveals that the newly named McDonough Meteorite comes from across Mars and is linked to a much larger asteroid that disbanded about 5 billion years ago.
“It belongs to the main asteroid group of asteroids in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and we believe it can lead to a much larger asteroid breakup about 470 million years ago,” Harris said. “But in that split, some pieces enter orbit across the Earth, and given long enough, it’s the same moment when the sun and the orbit around the Earth’s orbit around the sun are in the same place.”
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McDonough Meteorite made a considerable entrance on June 26th. NASA’s Meteor Environment Office estimated that an object three feet wide (1 meter) was moving at 29,000 mph (47,000 km/h), while the American Meteor Society has received more than 240 sightings of fireballs in the southeast. Also, many people felt the Sonic boom. Some people mistaken it for an earthquake, the Smithsonian reported it shortly after the event.
The met stones moved through our atmosphere and fell apart as we got closer to the ground, which slowed quite a bit, but moved fast enough to damage the impact.
“When are they [meteorites] When we encounter Earth, our atmosphere is very good at slowing them down,” Harris said. [0.6 miles per second]. It’s like running 10 soccer fields in a second. ”
When some of the met stones hit McDonough’s house, they went straight through the roof, ceiling, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) ducts. The statement said it left a dent on the living room floor, making noise and vibrations. The rock fragments were crushed into impact fragments, dusting the space around the room that home residents still find today.
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Harris analyzed 0.8 ounces (23 grams) of rock fragments recovered from the house using optical and electron microscopes. Based on this analysis, he considers metstone to be a stone stone (chondrite) with a low metal content, according to the statement.
Researchers continue to analyze UGA rock fragments, but several additional pieces that landed in the area will be exhibited at the Ters Science Museum in Cartersville.
Met stones are relatively rare in Georgia. The statement said it was the 27th documented documented in the state’s history, with the sixth seen falling. However, Harris noted that they are being recorded more frequently.
“This was something that was expected once every few decades, not more than multiple times within 20 years,” Harris said. “In addition to the polite masses, modern technology will help restore more and more met stones.”
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