UPDATE: Click here to view Classified in Meteoritical Bulletin, no. 105
1.8kg L5 Chondrite
Whole stone, with small corner cut off for classification analysis
Classified in Meteoritical Bulletin, no. 105
Discovered on April 18, 2014, Ramlat as Sahmah 514 is a beautiful reddish meteorite with a glassy coat with indentations and an exposed vesicle. The meteorite was found in Al Wusta, Oman (Latitude: 20°26.258'N, Longitude: 55°47.905'E). The D08 painted on in white is for the "D" meteorite-hunting trip and specimen number "08" for this particular find. Of the 1,820g total weight of this celestial stone, a corner has been cut off, revealing the interior, to be sent for chemical classification at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin. From chemical analysis, it was determined to be an L5 chondrite.
Unlike planetary bodies with a differentiated mantle and core, this meteorite contains iron-nickel as a free metal, making it magnetic.
The L chondrite meteors may have their origin in the Ordovician meteor event, from a parent asteroid was catastrophically disrupted by a large impact around 468 million years ago.
The chondrules in a chondrite are time capsules from when the planets of our solar system were forming. From Tim Gregory’s recent book, Meteorite: The Stones From Outer Space That Made Our World: 'Billowing through the protoplanetary disc as a mass of brightly glowing droplets of lava, clouds of freshly sintered chondrule grains swarmed for five million years. Trillions upon trillions of chondrules, in numbers that far exceed the number of stars in the observable Universe, spiraled as gravitational vortices, and coalesced to build the asteroids and the planets. What a sight it must have been.' (p.140)
'Some of the grains come from other solar systems that popped like supernova firecrackers in our midst. The diamond and silicon carbide grains crystallized around other stars. They are pieces of bona fide stardust. Some pre-date the solar system by over three billion years! Tiny pieces of rock that are seven billion years old! The mind boggles. We call these most remarkable motes of cosmic sediment ‘pre-solar’ grains.' (p.179).
