Researchers at a French university have finally identified a meteor fragment that was discovered in the Algerian Sahara desert in May 2020, which has probably been ‘at least 100 years’.
The piece of meteor, named Erg Chech 002 (EC 002), is believed to date 4.5 billion years, dating back to the early days of the solar system. Of volcanic origin, it detached from a protoplanet about 26 million years ago and continued its journey through space, eventually dipping to Earth, where it rested for about a century before being uncovered.
The scientific finding is documented in a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, in which geochemists from Brest University in France explain how rare the meteor is, just one in 65,000.
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It is believed that the reason for the rarity of the meteor is that other forms of this material either formed part of other planets or were pulverized by the chaotic and evolving solar system after being released.
“No asteroid shares the spectral properties of EC 002, indicating that almost all of these bodies have disappeared, either because they formed the building blocks of larger bodies or planets or were simply destroyed,” said the researchers.
The formation of its structure “Poorly understood, in part because of the scarcity of available samples,” the newspaper also noted. It is believed that there are about a hundred fragments of the meteor, but so far only 43 have been identified and officially categorized, reports the AFP.
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