• Home
  • Science
  • Science News
  • Meteorite That Crashed Into Canadian Woman’s Home Can Reveal Much About Solar System's Origin

Meteorite That Crashed Into Canadian Woman’s Home Can Reveal Much About Solar System's Origin

The meteorite pierced through the roof of a home in British Columbia, Canada.

Meteorite That Crashed Into Canadian Woman’s Home Can Reveal Much About Solar System's Origin

Photo Credit: The Golden Star/ Ruth Hamilton

The meteorite is said to be 4.5 billion years old, making it older than anything on Earth

Highlights
  • The meteorite pierced through the roof of the house in British Columbia
  • The rock has an unusual weight for its size
  • The woman has loaned the rock to scientists for a month
Advertisement

While NASA is sending a spacecraft to Jupiter's asteroids in an unprecedented mission to unravel the mystery of solar system's origin, a physicist has said that a meteorite, that crash-landed in a home in Canada this month, can offer similar results. Peter G. Brown, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Western Ontario, said the small rock, which spun out of its orbit in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and entered the Earth, has the potential to shed light on how the early solar system was formed.

The meteorite pierced through the roof of a home in British Columbia and landed on the pillow near a sleeping woman on October 4. She was awakened by the sound of the crash and the sensation she felt on her face because of the debris. She immediately called the emergency helpline, 911. Officials later determined the rock was a meteorite.

Professor Brown said the woman has loaned the rock to the university and scientists will study it for a month or so to find answers to “a small piece of a larger puzzle”, the Globe And Mail reported. He said the meteorite is 4.5 billion years old, making it older than anything on Earth. But, he added, the rock is formed of minerals found here, like iron and nickel. Their proportions are much larger than the rocks found on Earth, which gives the rock unusual weight for its size.

Professor Brown said the results of his study will try to link the rock to specific asteroids swinging beyond Mars. He said he is also interested in photos of the fireball that formed when the meteorite entered the Earth. The photos will help him compute the meteorite's orbit to figure out its origin.

“The sheer quantity of information that's hidden in the rock that we can tease out, in a lot of ways it's like a really, really dense messenger of information about the early solar system,” he said.

The rock will be eventually returned to the woman, whose roof it tore.

NASA, meanwhile, is set to launch its Lucy mission to study Trojan asteroids of Jupiter this evening. The spacecraft will go where no previous missions have dared to reach.


Realme India CEO Madhav Sheth joins Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast for an exclusive wide-ranging interview, as he talks about the 5G push, Make in India, Realme GT series and Book Slim, and how stores can improve their standing. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.
Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.

Further reading: Meteorite, Solar System, Canada, Lucy
Realme GT Neo 2 With Snapdragon 870 SoC Goes on First Sale in India Today: Price, Specifications
Jack Dorsey Says Square Is Looking to Build a Bitcoin Mining System
Share on Facebook Gadgets360 Twitter Share Tweet Snapchat Share Reddit Comment google-newsGoogle News
 
 

Advertisement

Follow Us

Advertisement

© Copyright Red Pixels Ventures Limited 2024. All rights reserved.
Trending Products »
Latest Tech News »