Meteorites

AS3141 Benda Kecil dalam Tata Surya

Prodi Astronomi 2007/2008
Budi Dermawan
 Falls and finds (1)

Meteorite find: typically, a farmer finds a strange

rocky/metallic object when ploughing his field
(most common in the museums)

Meteorite fall: the fireball of the falling meteorite is

observed, and the freshly fallen pieces are found on the
ground
(useful for statistics of different types)
 Falls and finds (2)

The meteorites usually

fragment during flight; the
largest fragments travel
furthest along an oblique
in fall path
The Antarctic ice forms
accumulation sites for
meteorites; these have
been explored recently
Meteorite find in the Lybian desert
Spectra
Classification
 Meteorite types

}
Chondrites ~85% of falls
- formed in the solar nebula
stony
Achondrites ~8% of falls
- formed by igneous processes near the surface of major or
minor planets
Stony irons ~1% of falls
Irons ~6% of falls
- formed by fragmentation of core-mantle differentiated
asteroids
Meteorites that are finds are likely to be iron, because these are obviously
different from Earths rocks. Whereas the stony meteorites can blend in with
other rocks when viewed by untrained eye
 Origin of Meteorites
Radioactive dating puts ages at 4.6 Byr
Meteorites originate in silicon and metal rich
meteoroids (asteroids), not the icy cometary
material that would burn up in the atmosphere
Iron meteorites suggest molten cores. The
heat source would not have lasted long, and
this is consistent with a picture where the
meteorites formed early in the history of the
solar nebula
Interactions with cosmic rays from the solar
wind alter or age the meteorites, but there
isnt that much aging apparent, suggesting
that the meteorites must have been protected
under layers or rock until recently
Meteorites originated relatively recently (<1
Byr) in collisions between asteroids or
planetesimals
 Iron Meteorites
Rare
Interior generally shows complex structure
called Widmanstatten patterns formed from
iron-nickel alloys and the very high degree
of order requires that the molten metal
must have cooled extremely slowly (~20 K
every Myr)
Must originate in the cores of meteoroids
large enough to be molten (to support
differentiation) and large enough to have a
significant insulating layer that leads to
very slow cooling of the molten core
 Stony Meteorites
Rich in silicates or stony materials
The most common type is chondrite (from
the glassy inclusions called chondrules),
which have the same composition as the
Sun with all volatile gasses (H, He) missing
Expected to be original samples of material
that condensed in the solar nebula
Glassy chondrules are bits of melted rocks
that cooled too quickly to form ordered
crystalline structures
 Chemical classes of chondrites
CI (Ivuna) carbonaceous ~4% of falls
CM (Murchison)
CO (Ornans)
CV (Vigarano)
H (high iron) ordinary ~79% of falls
L (low iron)
LL (low-low)
EH (high iron) enstatite ~2% of falls
EL (low iron)
 Structure of chondrites
Matrix: dark, fine-
grained background
Chondrules: nearly
spherical droplets,
typically of mm-size
CAI (Calcium-Aluminum-
rich Inclusions) are
whitish, irregularly
shaped
 Meteoritic
compounds

Chemical equilibrium
reaction network of
solids in the solar
nebula
Each mineral is marked
at the temperature
where it condenses or
sublimates
 Chondrite formation

Separation of high-and low-

temperature materials
CAIs may result from
extreme heating in the early,
active nebula
Chondrules were made by
rapid, less extreme heating
whose nature is not
understood
Volatile depletion of matrix
remains to be explained
 Chondrites as chronometers of
solar system formation
Allende CAIs have Pb-Pb ages of 4560 Myr
Whole-rock Pb-Pb ages of chondrites cluster around
4555 Myr
(207Pb enrichment due to U decay)

Suggestion: CAIs formed during the early collapse

phase; chondrites were assembled a few Myr later in
a quiescent nebula
 12C/13C ratio in meteorites (1)
Solar System average = 89.9
The gas in the presolar cloud (mainly CO) was
homogenized
The grains in the presolar cloud retained very
different ratios, reflecting various formation
environments
Did such grains survive until they were
incorporated into chondrites?
 12C/13C ratio in meteorites (2)

The answer is YES!

The SiC grains are presolar and may be much older than the
Solar System
Organic grains in 1P/Halley were found to range from 0.01 to
60, a still much wider range: presolar
 Extinct radionuclides

Radio-nuclide T1/2 (Myr) Daughter species

26Al 0.7 26Mg

53Mn 3.7 53Cr

107Pd 6.5 107Ag

129I 16 129Xe

146Sm 103 142Nd

244Pu 82 fission Xe
 Achondrites / parent bodies

SNC meteorites (Shergotty, Nakhla, Chassigny)

come from Mars
Lunar meteorites
HED meteorites (Howardites, Eucrites,
Diogenites) come from (4) Vesta
Ureilites come from a large carbonaceous
asteroid that is likely collisionally disrupted
 Recent Results: Marchi et al. 2005 (1)

Flux of Meteoroid Impacts on Mercury

Model:

1. Meteoroid flux (radius r & impact velocity ):

( , r )ddr f ( , r )h(r )ddr

(,r) differential flux
f (,r) differential normalized impact velocity distribution
h (r) number of impacts

2. Delivery routes from MBAs are 3:1 & 6 resonances

(Morbidelli & Gladman 1998, Bottke et al. 2002)
 Recent Results: Marchi et al. 2005 (2)
=1

Mercury is the ratio between 3:1 & 6 resonances Earth

=5

has only a little influence

 Recent Results: Marchi et al. 2005 (3)

Impacts on Mercury occur

from15 to 80 km s-1 (Earth
50 km s-1)
Impacts at perihelion
happen at considerably
greater velocity than
averaged over Mercurys
entire orbit (47%, 43%,
33% for r = 10,000, 100, 1
cm)
 Recent Results: Marchi et al. 2005 (4)

Impacts at aphelion have a symmetric distribution (am/pm = 1)

for r = 270 cm, while at aphelion is always am/pm > 1

c (r ) 1.4 r Myr
c is catastrophic
collisional half-time of
meteoroids that are
crossing the MBAs (r in
cm)
(Wetherill 1985, Farinella
et al. 1998)
 Recent Results: Bottke et al. 2006 (1)

Iron meteorites as remnants of planetesimals formed in

the terrestrial planet region

Scattered into the main-

belt zone.
Once there the objects
are dynamically
indistinguishable from
the rest of the main-belt
population
Recent Results: Bottke
et al. 2006 (2)

o Enter the main-belt zone

through a combination of
resonant interactions and
close encounters with
planetary embryos
o Much of the particles is
delivered to the inner main-
belt, where most
meteoroids are dynamically
most likely to reach Earth
 Recent Results: Bottke et al. 2006 (3)
Inner solar system planetesimals experienced significantly
more heating than S- and C-type asteroids, with the most
plausible planetesimal heat source being radionuclides like
26Al and 60Fe

If main-belt interlopers are derived from regions closer to the

Sun, their shorter accretion times would lead to more internal
heating and thus they would probably look like heavily
metamorphosed or differentiated asteroids
 Recent Results: Bottke et al. 2006 (4)
Delivery efficiency of test bodies from various main-belt
resonances striking the Earth
 Recent Results: Domokos et al. 2007

Meteoroid flux at
Mars: <4.410-6
meteoroids km-2 h-1,
Masses > 4 g
Flux at Earth: 10-6
meteoroids km-2 h-1
(Grn et al. 1985)
New mechanism of triggering meteorite
delivery to Earth
Yarkovsky thermal forces on Veritas family
 The End

www.kosmochemie.de iron meteorite with shiny fusion crust (width ca. 25 cm)