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Homeowners from Elmshorn with meteorite find

Photo: Daniel Bockwoldt / dpa

It is about the size of a tennis ball and does not come from this world: The boulder that fell in northern Germany at the end of April is a meteorite from the group of common chondrites of type H. Scientists have now confirmed this.

This type of meteorite has a particularly high proportion of metal, as the University of Münster announced. One of the meteorites was examined at the Institute of Planetology there – after the first impact on a residential building, further chunks were discovered, a total of around four kilograms.

According to the information, the celestial rock dates back to the prehistoric times of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago and has an intense so-called brecciation. This means that the rock consists of various components such as very original and unchanged as well as highly heated material.

"The bracciation of the meteorite was caused by previous collisions in the early solar system and the asteroid belt, a region with a particularly high concentration of asteroids that lies between Mars and Jupiter," said Markus Patzek from the Institute of Planetology. The parent body of the Elmshorn meteorite collided with other asteroids there, providing insights into the history of the celestial body.

On April 25, at around 14:00 p.m., a fireball lit up over Schleswig-Holstein. Shortly thereafter, residents of the city discovered impacts on rooftops and in gardens and found pieces of meteorites ranging from a few hundred grams to several kilograms in weight. Some of the finds were made available to scientists for examination.

»A small sensation for meteorite research«

For the analyses, the research team in Münster sawed up a piece of the meteorite weighing about 40 grams and produced several so-called thin sections. These 30 micrometer-thick rock slices allow further investigations of the internal structure using optical and electron microscopy.

"The largest object weighs 3724 grams. That alone is great for research. The best thing about this meteorite fall, however, is the fact that the finds could be reported so quickly and thus brought to an immediate investigation. The fall of Elmshorn is really a small sensation for meteorite research," says meteorite expert Dieter Heinlein, according to a statement from the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

In the rapid analysis, short-lived radioisotopes, unstable and low-radiation nuclides of radioactive elements, can be examined. These then allow conclusions to be drawn about the origin and history of the stony meteorite.

Some of it was also processed into fine powder, which the researchers made available to other institutes in Europe for further investigation. Among other things, it will be examined whether the meteorite provides new insights into collision and formation processes in the early solar system.

Not all meteorites are the same as meteoroids

Meteorites crash to Earth when grains of dust or, more rarely, larger fragments of rock and metal cross the Earth's orbit around the Sun and, in the event of a collision, enter the Earth's atmosphere. At the high speeds of up to 200,000 kilometers per hour and more, they are strongly heated by the friction of the upper atmosphere. In the process, small fragments burn up completely, which is often visible from Earth as a meteoroid or shooting star, DLR reports.

Larger intruders form a briefly visible fireball, which burst with a loud bang at an altitude of several tens of thousands of meters and fall to the ground as meteorites at speeds of 150 to 300 kilometers per hour.

dpa/joe