‘Rare, unique’: Diyodar meteorite in 2022 was India’s first aubrite in 170 years Premium
The Hindu
There are some signs that aubrite meteorites could be from the planet Mercury.
On August 17, 2022, a meteorite streaked over India, breaking apart as it descended through the air, to scatter over two villages in Banaskantha, Gujarat. One piece struck a neem tree in Rantila village and shattered into several pieces. Another landed on the porch of a house in Ravel village, 10 km away, and met a similar fate.
The meteorite is a “rare, unique specimen” of aubrite, analysis by a group of scientists at the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad, has revealed. India has been the site of hundreds of meteorite crashes, but this is only the second recorded crash of an aubrite. The last was on December 2, 1852, in Basti, Uttar Pradesh.
Worldwide, aubrites have crashed in at least 12 locations since 1836, including three in Africa and six in the U.S.
According to the ‘Encyclopedia of Physical Science and Technology’ (2003), aubrites “are coarse-grained igneous rocks that formed” in oxygen-poor conditions, and thus “contain a variety of exotic minerals that are not found on Earth”. For example, the mineral heideite was first described in the Basti meteorite.
“You won’t find it every day,” Sujoy Ghosh, an assistant professor of Geology and Geophysics at IIT Kharagpur, told The Hindu. “Something unique can also come from this meteorite.”
The PRL group’s results were published in Current Science on January 25.
Meteors are pieces of some solid object in space that broke away, descended onto a planet or moon, and managed to reach the surface. Once on the surface, they are called meteorites. Aubrites are a type of meteorite; scientists are not yet sure of their origin, although some signs indicate that they could be from the asteroid 3103 Eger or from the planet Mercury.
