The meteorite that fell in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district on August 17, 2022 last year was a rare specimen of an aubrite seen in India for the first time since 1852. They have been dubbed as the Diyodar meteorite, after the taluka in which the villages are located.
Key points
- According to a study published in the Journal Current Science, the meteorite streaked over India, breaking apart as it descended through the air, to scatter over two villages in Banaskantha.
- 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.
- 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.
- The Diyodar aubrite mainly contained a mineral known as enstatite with characteristics similar to what is thought to be on the surface of Mercury.
- 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.
- The conditions in which aubrites form are prevalent on the surface of Mercury; however, the researchers wrote that they “don’t have any known Mercurian samples in our collection”.
