Rock family tree
The cover shows a cross-sectional view of the interior of a meteorite recovered from the Mackay Glacier icefields during the 2005 field season of the Antarctic Search for Meteorites. To date only some 6% of meteorite falls have been reliably connected to their source. In this week’s issue, two papers by Michaël Marsset and colleagues and Miroslav Brož and co-workers redress that balance, suggesting a probable origin for the majority of meteorites found on Earth. The researchers focused on the two most common types of meteorite: H and L chondrites. They determined
that these probably came from three young asteroid families, suggesting that they are the remnants of collisions that occurred millions or tens of millions of years ago — much more recent than had previously been expected.
Cover image: Jérôme Gattacceca/CNRS/CEREGE
Contact
©Jérôme GATTACECCA
DR-Directeur de Recherche CEREGE
TP-Terre et Planètes
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