Finding a meteorite 20 years after it hit the ground
By reanalyzing the data that had recorded the fireball twenty years ago, a team of meteorite hunters in the Czech Republic have finally located the remains of a meteorite that landed in 1991 but could not be found.
What is most interesting scientifically about their find is that the pieces they found were from different types of meteorites.
[T]hese four meteorites are of three different mineralogical types. This means that the Benešov meteoroid was heterogeneous and contained at least three different types of material. After the Almahata Sitta fall, this is the second time that such a heterogeneous composition has been found. It raises the possibility that a significant fraction of all asteroids are heterogeneous and that they were strongly reprocessed by collisions with other asteroids in the main belt.
In other words, the meteorite had been a conglomerate of different geological types, which were created in different environments and were later smashed together to form this one rock.
By reanalyzing the data that had recorded the fireball twenty years ago, a team of meteorite hunters in the Czech Republic have finally located the remains of a meteorite that landed in 1991 but could not be found.
What is most interesting scientifically about their find is that the pieces they found were from different types of meteorites.
[T]hese four meteorites are of three different mineralogical types. This means that the Benešov meteoroid was heterogeneous and contained at least three different types of material. After the Almahata Sitta fall, this is the second time that such a heterogeneous composition has been found. It raises the possibility that a significant fraction of all asteroids are heterogeneous and that they were strongly reprocessed by collisions with other asteroids in the main belt.
In other words, the meteorite had been a conglomerate of different geological types, which were created in different environments and were later smashed together to form this one rock.