A study published today in the journal Nature concludes that 70% of all known fallen meteorites come from three families of asteroids: Karin, Koronis and Massalia, formed by collisions that occurred 5.8 million years ago, 7.5 and 40, respectively.
In particular, the Massalia family of asteroids has been identified as the source of 37% of known meteorites.
Asteroids are rocky objects that remained as a kind of remains from the initial formation of the Solar System and orbit around the Sun; while meteorites are small parts of an asteroid or comet that burn upon contact with the Earth’s atmosphere, creating a beam of light in the sky.
The discovery known today is the result of three investigations led by the Marseille Astrophysics Laboratory, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and Charles University in Prague.
Scientists explain that the reason why the origin of meteorites is concentrated in these three families of “young” asteroids is precisely that youth, which makes them abundant in small fragments (rocks) from collisions, with great mobility and ease of escape from the main belt “possibly in the direction of Earth.”
On the contrary, families of asteroids resulting from older collisions are practically exhausted sources of meteorites, since these rocks have eroded naturally and finally disappeared after tens of millions of years of successive collisions and evolution.
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To date, science has recorded the fall of approximately 70,000 meteorites
In this way, the young asteroid families Karin, Koronis and Massalia, which contain rocky remains of more recent collisions, have ended up being the main sources of meteorites recorded on Earth.
To reach this conclusion, researchers have combined telescopic study of the composition of all the large families of asteroids in the main belt of the solar system with state-of-the-art computer simulations.
Until now, science had recorded the fall of about 70,000 meteorites, but the origin of only 6% of them had been able to be identified.
This new research identifies the source of more than 90% of meteorites.
Furthermore, scientists have been able to trace the origin of kilometer-sized asteroids, which can pose a threat to life on Earth and which have been the subject of numerous space missions, and have concluded that they derive from the same progenitor asteroid belonging to the so-called family Polana.
The origin of the remaining 10% of known meteorites remains unknown. To find out, researchers plan to continue their research, focusing on the characterization of all families of young asteroids that formed less than 50 million years ago.
With information from EFE.
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