Asteroid 4 Vesta?--- A tiny meteorite tells a story of melting in the deep mantle of a big asteroid.
Meteorites recovered from Antarctica and other places on Earth are generally first classified based on their mineralogies and textures. While this approach works fairly well for large meteorites, it is quite a bit more difficult to determine what group a meteorite belongs to when only a small fragme...
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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2003
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.568.3334 http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Jan03/PSRD-QUE93148.pdf |
| Summary: | Meteorites recovered from Antarctica and other places on Earth are generally first classified based on their mineralogies and textures. While this approach works fairly well for large meteorites, it is quite a bit more difficult to determine what group a meteorite belongs to when only a small fragment is found. This is especially true when that fragment consists of only one or two different coarse-grained minerals. Such was the case for QUE 93148 found in the Queen Alexandra Range, Antarctica in 1993. Although it was originally classified as a lodranite, geochemical data soon showed that it did not belong to this group. It currently appears that QUE 93148 is related in some way to main group pallasites and may be a chip of the mantle of the asteroid in which pallasites formed. |
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