Meteorite that crashed into B.C. woman's house could shed light on solar system's origin, physicist says
A small, angular rock that one Canadian physicist says looks like a chunk of black cheese has the potential to help scientists understand how the early solar system formed.
Peter G. Brown, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Western Ontario, says the meteorite made its fiery way to Earth on Oct. 3, after spinning out of its orbit in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, nearly 180 million kilometres away.
It tore through the roof of a home in Golden, B.C., narrowly missing the head a sleeping woman.
Brown says the woman has loaned the rock to the university and, for the next month or so, it will become “a small piece of a larger puzzle” as scientists “disentangle how the early solar system formed.”
He says the 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite is older than anything on Earth but is formed of minerals found here, like iron and nickel, although in much larger proportions, giving it unusual weight for a rock its size.
The exact chemistry is still being studied, but Brown says the findings will link the rock to specific asteroids spinning beyond Mars, while his goal is to use photos of the Oct. 3 fireball to compute the meteorite's orbit, then merge the chemical and physical data to track the rock's origin.
It will eventually be returned to the woman whose roof it punctured, but Brown says it will first have given scientists a peek at how the asteroid belt formed, how asteroids evolved and how all that played a role in the formation of the planets.
“This piece is sort of a primitive piece of the original material that formed in the early solar system,” Brown says in an interview from his office in London, Ont.
“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.”
The recovery of this meteorite and the associated photos of its fireball over southwestern Canada are fairly rare, Brown says.
It happens only once every five or ten years, but he says the data produced will be combined with similar events elsewhere in the world.
“We are building up a bigger statistical collection of these sorts of samples with spatial context but each one is unique, and it certainly makes the meteorite science a lot more valuable to know what the original orbit was of the object.”
“We learn a lot of new things about the solar system each time we do this,” Brown says.
Initial analysis of the meteorite could take a few weeks to a month, but more detailed examination “could go on for years,” he says.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 15, 2021.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
'He's in our hearts': Family and friends still seek answers one year after Nathan Wise’s disappearance
It’s been a year since Nathan Wise went missing and his family is no closer to finding out what happened to him.
'My family doctor just fired me': Ontario patients frustrated with de-rostering
Dozens of Ontarians are expressing frustration in the province’s health-care system after their family doctors either dropped them as patients or threatened to after they sought urgent care elsewhere.
Ottawa pizzeria places among top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world at international competition
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
Canada Post cracks down on Nunavut loophole to get free Amazon Prime shipping
Amazon's paid subscription service provides free delivery for online shopping across Canada except for remote locations, the company said in an email. While customers in Iqaluit qualify for the offer, all other communities in Nunavut are excluded.
Wildfire near Fort McMurray more than triples overnight, several evacuation alerts remain in place
The fire burning near Fort McMurray grew from 25 hectares to 5,500 hectares over the weekend.
Putin replaces Russian defence minister in rare cabinet shakeup
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin began a Cabinet shakeup on Sunday, proposing the replacement of Sergei Shoigu as defence minister as he begins his fifth term in office.
Man fatally 'slashed in the neck' in downtown Toronto, suspect outstanding
Police are searching for a male suspect after a man was “slashed in neck” on Sunday morning in downtown Toronto and died.
WATCH Dashcam video shows terrifying near-miss on two-lane northern Ontario highway
There were some scary moments for several people on a northern Ontario highway caught on video Thursday after a chain reaction following a truck fire.
Edibles, armchairs and adapters: Here are the recalls for this week
Health Canada announced various product recalls this week, including electric adapters, armchairs, cannabis edibles and vehicle components.