Chase a meteorite?
Lincoln Hanton is on the trail of a meteorite.
The geology student and research assistant at the University of Calgary is working with a team that’s hoping to recover and study parts of the space rock that fell to Earth near Banff last year.
Their search is being aided by a photographer who captured the spectacular fireball that streaked across the night sky Dec. 20, 2014.
“Because we know the exact location where the photo was taken, we have a reference frame. So if we’re able to identify stars in the sky of the photo, we’ll be able to know exactly where they are, so it’s extremely valuable in the case of a fireball,” said Hanton.
“What we would do is sort of select stars on either side of the fireball, both of these stars we know the exact ... location in the sky, so we draw a line between these two stars and where it intersects on the fireball is sort of our data point. Basically, all we’re doing is triangulating its location.”
Any fragments that are recovered could offer clues to the origin of the solar system.
“Because it was so high up in the atmosphere where the fragmentation happened ... we think it could be a very weak type of meteorite, so something like a carbonaceous chondrite.
“Carbonaceous chondrites are quite interesting in that they’re quite primitive in their composition.
“If the meteorite we’re dealing with here is carbonaceous and we’re able to get a sample, it would tell us quite a bit about the early solar system. They’ve undergone very little alteration or change since the solar system formed, so it tells us some information on how the solar system came to be.”
In the meantime, Hanton has been working on a simulated carbonaceous chondrite, based on a meteorite that fell at Tagish Lake, B. C., in 2000. Analysis of the Tagish Lake meteorite fragments found that it contained stellar dust particles that may have been part of the cloud of material that created the solar system and sun.
The fake rock is “designed to simulate the physical and magnetic properties of this meteorite,” Hanton said.
“This one in particular is clay-based. It’s primarily clay minerals, so it’s not very difficult for us to sort of mimic its properties.
“It looks like a rock. Pretty much like a crumbly rock,” he said.
He says it would be “really cool” to find a piece of the space rock in the forest around Banff.
“Holding a piece of a rock that’s billions of years old is super cool. It wasn’t made here, it wasn’t made on Earth. It came from out there.”
A search was conducted in mid-September, but failed to turn up any traces of the meteorite.