In the early hours of January 21 , asteroid 2024 BX1 flee through the atmosphere over Germany , burn up and breaking aside about 100 kilometers ( 62 miles ) west of Berlin . It was only theeighth asteroidever foreshadow to collide with Earth before it hit the planet , giving us a rare 95 - minute warning . This lead to a scientific hunt for possible meteorites and quickly one was found – which has turned out to be a very uncommon discovery .
Researchers from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin as well as fellow worker from the Freie Universität Berlin and the German Aerospace Center initially recuperate thewalnut - sized meteoritefrom a field in the township of Ribbeck , about 80 kilometers Union - west of Berlin . psychoanalysis of the rock’n’roll suggests that it is in the rare radical of achondrite known as aubrites . There are only87 known samplesof this type of outer space rock from just 17 land site globally .
" found on a compare against the Aubrés fall , we were able to make a rough classification of the Ribbeck meteorites relatively chop-chop , " Dr Ansgar Greshake , scientific head of the museum ’s Meteorite Collection , said in astatement . " This underlines the Brobdingnagian grandness of scientific ingathering for research . So far , there is only material from eleven maintain aubrite falls in appeal worldwide . "
Aubrites front very different from other meteorite . They are typically light - dyed and if they have a merger crust then they are brownish , a difference that stems from their peculiar composition . The team has now find 20 meteorite samples , the analysis of which is ongoing . Electron microprobes ofthe firstrevealed the kinship to aubrites .
" Aubrites look more like a grayish granite and lie in mainly of the magnesium silicates enstatite and forsterite , " explained Dr Christopher Hamann , who was involved in the meteorite ’s initial classification and is with the museum ’s Solar System , Impacts and Meteorites department .
" It check scarcely any smoothing iron and the fusion crust , a flimsy , tell - tale stratum of blow out thaw coating meteorite and which typically reserve identifying them as such in the theatre of operations , bet completely different than that of most other meteorite . Aubrites are therefore difficult to notice in the field . "
The peculiar mineralogical social system see in aubrites suggest that their parent body must have had a violent story . Not that their parent body is known . One hypothesis is that the parent belongs to the E - character asteroid in the Solar System ’s inner Asteroid Belt that are think to have achondrite Earth’s surface . Or maybe they were broken off from a near - Earth object , 3103 Eger , which is also an einsteinium - case but gets very penny-pinching to Earth . Another suggestion is that they are small-arm of another planet : Mercury .
The samples were submitted to the Nomenclature Committee of the Meteoritical Society on February 2 for examination and verification . Hopefully , we might find out more about these rare types of meteorites .
