A 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite "landed" in a village

The sky continues to offer surprises for the inhabitants of the Blue Planet. Some are bigger, others smaller, in the form of "stones". The meteorite that crashed near Berlin earlier this year is about 4.5 billion years old and belongs to the rare class of aubrites, scientists announced in an article published this week in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science. The small asteroid 2024 BX1 started burning up as it entered Earth's atmosphere near Berlin. Fragments of it fell to the ground in the Havelland region of Brandenburg, which surrounds the German capital, and many of them were then collected by scientists and collectors. About 202 fragments weighing a total of 1.8 kilograms were found in fields near the villages of Ribbeck, Berge and Lietzow in Brandenburg, scattered over an area measuring 1.5 kilometers by 10 kilometers.

Scientists gave this meteorite the name "Ribbeck", after the village where most fragments were found. A study carried out by researchers from the Institute of Planetology at the University of Munster found that "Ribbeck" belongs to the extremely rare class of aubrites, which are meteorites rich in magnesium and silicon. The researchers also discovered that "Ribbeck" has a special status within this rare class, because it contains an exceptionally high proportion of feldspars, a mineral that is part of the silicate group. Researchers assume that the cosmic object from which "Ribbeck" came off is approximately 4.5 billion years old and comes from the Asteroid Belt between the planets Mars and Jupiter. The scientists also explained why the fragments of this meteorite smelled strongly of hydrogen sulfide, an odor similar to that of rotten eggs: chemical reactions between mineral phases and moisture, resulting from snow and thaw, cause that smell and changed the mineralogy the rocks.