Oldest Martian Meteorite on Earth Traced to Its Origin on the Red Planet

August 4, 2023 12:18 AM

Oldest Martian Meteorite on Earth Traced to Its Origin on the Red Planet. Researchers used machine learning algorithms to determine which crater on Mars the space rock came from.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (16 comments total)

named NWA 7034 or Black Beauty

Straight Outta Cimmeria-Sirenum
posted by chavenet at 4:26 AM on August 4, 2023 [7 favorites]

Is there a picture or map of the crater it came from?
posted by rebent at 5:04 AM on August 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

from a link [sciencealert.com] inside the smithsonianmag.com article:

Lagain and his colleagues used the powerful Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre in Western Australia, and an algorithm developed at Curtin University for the express purpose of detecting impact craters. An analysis of the size and spatial distribution of 90 million craters detected by this algorithm allowed scientists to narrow down the origin of Black Beauty.

Their results revealed multiple impacts went into forming Black Beauty. The oldest fragments of the rock were blasted from the Martian crust around 1.5 billion years ago from a spot marked by the 40-kilometer-across (25 miles) Khujirt crater in the southern hemisphere of Mars. This material fell back to Mars, where it remained until around 5 to 10 million years ago, when the impact that created the Karratha crater threw it up again, sending it flying into space on its journey to Earth.

emphasis mine. i think that's pretty neat, this poor rock getting punted around the surface of Mars before being escape-velocitied to Terra.

rebent: there's an image of the crater in the sciencealert.com article
posted by glonous keming at 5:34 AM on August 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

to determine which crater on Mars the space rock came from.
I'm torn between
- "Hey! Which one of you planets threw that?! Was it you? Did you throw this rock?"
and
'Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!'
posted by bartleby at 5:50 AM on August 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

Seems like we ought to put it back and see if anything happens
posted by potrzebie at 7:12 AM on August 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

I'm happy that they used specialized ML to do what specialized ML is good for. This being 2023, I was half expecting to read that somebody had just asked ChatGPT to explain where that rock came from.
posted by flabdablet at 7:33 AM on August 4, 2023 [7 favorites]

Hey! Which one of you planets threw that?! Was it you? Did you throw this rock?

Jupiter, you're such a dick, man
posted by flabdablet at 7:40 AM on August 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

… the Mars colony discovers some rocks from Earth.

Is it possible for rocks to travel outward like that? If so, I wonder if there are meteorites from Venus here on Earth.
posted by TedW at 7:45 AM on August 4, 2023

Pardon my ignorance, but HOW do they know where it came from? That article only says what they found but not HOW. Did they match minerals from the sites? I have no clue. Unless this is just an ad for machine learning….
posted by njohnson23 at 8:03 AM on August 4, 2023

How can we tell that a meteorite came from Mars?
posted by Winnie the Proust at 9:37 AM on August 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Is it possible for rocks to travel outward like that? If so, I wonder if there are meteorites from Venus here on Earth.

Meteorites from Earth have almost certainly traveled to Mars, and there was a terrestrial meteorite found in the Apollo samples from the Moon.

It's harder to get meteorites off Venus, because it is as massive as Earth, plus its thick atmosphere slows down impactors and any ejecta from impacts. No known venerean meteorites have been found on Earth.
posted by BrashTech at 9:40 AM on August 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

meteorites from Venus

good band name
posted by philip-random at 10:01 AM on August 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

Aka Venus Rocks.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 10:38 AM on August 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

Shouldn't we find a mysterious object buried under the Hobbs End station now?
posted by doctornemo at 1:23 PM on August 4, 2023

"Hey! Which one of you planets threw that?! Was it you? Did you throw this rock?"

Well, take that!
*heaves Everest

Seriously, this is so cool. We can do so much with science...
except social science.
posted by BlueHorse at 6:49 PM on August 4, 2023

In the interest of solar geological ethics, this to metorite should be returned via Amazon or Twitter.
posted by clavdivs at 8:24 PM on August 4, 2023