2024-10-16 16:24:00
DECCRIBED – So far, only 6% of the 70,000 recorded meteorites had a known source (Moon, Mars or Vesta).
It is an immemorial, almost metaphysical question: where do meteorites come from, these pebbles that fall from the sky? « There are 250 of them Only years ago did humanity begin to understand that these were fragments from space »recalls Brigitte Zanda, meteorite specialist at the National Museum of Natural History, in Paris. And it was not clear what their precise origin in the cosmos was. Only 6% of the 70,000 meteorites recorded to date had a well-defined origin, i.e. the Moon, Mars or Vesta (the 2nd largest asteroid in the main belt, 530 km in diameter).
In two studies published in Nature (and a third in Astronomy and Astrophysics), an international team led in particular by two French astrophysicists, Michaël Marsset, of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), and Pierre Vernazza, of the Marseille Astrophysics Laboratory, has suddenly…
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