Back when the world was focusing on the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic, an extraordinary sight was witnessed over Scandinavia.
In 2020, a blazing fireball streaked across the sky over Uppsala, Sweden.
A year later, scientists found the object responsible for this sight.
It was a bread loaf-sized meteorite that weighed 13.8 kilograms.
This year, scientists with the American Astronomical Society published their results on where the meteorite might have come from.
Researchers found that the meteorite was mostly made of iron.
These meteorites are especially rare, with only 2 per cent of all officially classified meteorites being iron.
Not only are they important because of their rarity, but because of what the original parent bodies might have been.
Where do I come from?
There are stages of a meteorite's journey to Earth with different names, similar to how water has other names for different states (solid, liquid, gas).
Meteoroids are in space (an easy way to remember this is that meteoroid, sounds like droid; therefore, it must be in space because ... Star Wars).
Meteors have entered Earth's atmosphere but have not reached the ground, and meteorites are the fragments that have landed on Earth's surface (meteor-right, sounds like it is all right and safe on the ground).
Asteroids are what meteoroids come from (meteoroids are the broken bits that come off of asteroids). Asteroids are the leftover rocks and metals from when the planets first formed in our solar system.
As the rocky planets formed, molten rock and metals condensed, the lighter molten rock moved to the surface as the denser metals, such as iron, moved to the centre of the core.
Before our solar system had the planets we have today, more planets were forming that were destroyed.
This means that a meteorite mostly made from iron is likely to have come from the core of a failed planet.
Finding the parent body
Researchers found a substantial amount of video footage of the 2020 meteor before it landed, kicking off the search for the parent body of the meteorite.
To date, there have been 46 meteorites in the world that have had enough video footage for scientists to understand the direction and speed as it has approached Earth for them to follow the path back to where the meteorite came from.
Of these 46 meteorites, there has never been enough footage for an iron meteorite, making the 2020 meteorite the first.
The search results for the parent asteroid were not what scientists hoped for. Researchers could not find the exact asteroid that the meteorite came from; however, they did find where it could have broken off.
They found that the meteorite could have made its way to Earth in either two ways: it could have either split off inside the meteor belt or split from the parent body closer to Earth at least one million years ago.
It now holds the record for having the most accurate entry information of an iron meteorite and has shown that sometimes, it is about the journey, but all we have is the destination.
- Amy Briggs is undergraduate student at ANU studying science communication, with special interest in astronomy and astrophysics.
