Meteorite. The Stones From Outer Space (Meteorites. The Space Rocks That Created Our World) (Category PopularScience)

See you later. book Tim Gregory, I never took meteorites very seriously. But Tim, a geologist and cosmochemist, in a breathtaking manner turns dry scientific facts about meteorites into a fascinating mystery about the origin of the universe, where beneath the charred crusts of celestial wanderers lurk secrets that change our understanding of time and space. Below I run through the key moments of Knga.

The Claire Patterson Revolution: When the Stones Talked Until the middle of the twentieth century, the age of the Earth remained a subject of controversy. Religious theologians insisted on several thousand years, based on biblical texts, while scholars proposed various, often contradictory theories. The revolutionary breakthrough took place in 1953 The year when the American geochemist Claire Patterson He applied a new method of radioisotope dating to meteorites. He worked with fragments. meteoritewhich fell in Arizona near 50 000 years ago. Using the ratio of isotopes of uranium to lead, Patterson determined the age of this space rock — and therefore the age of the entire solar system — in the solar system. 4,55 billion years. This estimate was so accurate that it has remained virtually unchanged since then.

Chondrites: Time capsules from a protoplanetary disk A special place in the cosmic chronology is occupied by chondrites - the most common type of meteorites, which is about 85Percent of all falls to Earth. These ancient stone witnesses formed almost simultaneously with the Sun from the same protoplanetary cloud of gas and dust. Chondrites got their name from the characteristic spherical formations – chondras, which were formed by melting silicate dust in a hot protoplanetary disk. These tiny balls, usually less than a millimeter in size, are frozen droplets of molten stone that have arisen under extreme temperatures. 1370 before 1270 Kelvins.

The most primitive among chondrites are carbonaceous chondrites, and the most famous of them is a meteorite. allendewhich fell in Mexico 1969 year. This space guest weighs about 2 tons contain the oldest known solids of the solar system - calcium-aluminum inclusions (CAI)the age of which the 4,567 billion years.

Pre-solar grains: Stardust older than the Sun But meteorites hold even more ancient treasures. sungrainsStardust particles that are older than the solar system itself. These microscopic specks, ranging in size from nanometers to micrometers, formed in the atmospheres of dying stars or in the ejections of supernovae long before the birth of our Sun. The largest pre-solar grain discovered, Bonanza, found in the Murchison meteorite, is about the size of the planet. 30 micrometers and age 5-7 billions of years. These are the oldest solids on Earth, literally stardust from the distant cosmic past.

Modern methods of space archaeology Modern technologies allow to extract more and more information about the distant past from meteorites. High-resolution mass spectrometry makes it possible to analyze individual grains in fractions of a micrometer. Ion microprobes allow isotope ratios to be measured with incredible accuracy – comparable to measuring human height to the thickness of a hair.

In short, Tim refers to the study of meteorites as "an epic that cannot be matched." After all, each space rock that fell to Earth carries the history of stellar explosions, interstellar wanderings and the birth of planetary systems. These ancient artifacts not only tell us about the past, but also continue to open new pages in the book of cosmic evolution.

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