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Meteorite from Mercury?

Posted by michael on from the long-way-from-home dept.

texchanchan writes "The BBC reports that a chunk of rock, clearly from space, might have originated on Mercury. Analysis of its chemical makeup leads to this tentative conclusion. Specifically, it seems to have originated on something with 'a core of molten iron [and] an outer covering of silicon and aluminium that formed a basaltic crust.' This meteorite classification site sticks to the earlier theory that NWA 011 is from a Vesta-like source."

1 of 16 comments (clear)

  1. Am I missing something??? by cp99 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The BBC article has very few details, so I tried to track down more information on it. I found a recent paper in Science which appears to be about this meteorite (Yamaguchi et al, Science 2002, vol. 296).

    However, in the article there is no claim to it coming from Mercury (rather it is a new type of basalt). Am I missing somebody else's intrepetation of the data, or is this media spin?

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