SOUTH African scientists are collaborating with the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) to learn as much as they can about the Nqweba meteorite which plunged to earth in the Eastern Cape last month.
Wits University geology Professor Roger Gibson said the rock was called a breccia and was clearly a mix of different rocks. He said just because it was from an “alien world” some people thought it was dangerous, but that’s not the case.
“When we get these sorts of rocks landing as meteorites, we know they are what we call the regulus, which is essentially the soil of one of these planets in space.”
He said the more fragments they were able to collect, the greater the chances of finding something that no one had ever seen before, in terms of scientific results.
Gibson said the most sophisticated techniques would be used to see what’s inside the rock, and they expected a number of scientific papers and conference discussions to come from this.
The Nqweba meteorite is being kept in an undisclosed venue to prevent people with deep pockets from taking it out of the country illegally.
“It’s exciting for science but there are people, just like people who collect illegal art, who will take this thing and they will hide it away and they’ll sit and look at it on their own and not share it with anyone. That’s the unfortunate reality of some people in the world, and so that’s what we’re trying to guard against,” said Gibson.
The meteorite was picked up by nine-year old Eli-zé du Toit after she saw a dark rock fall from the sky and land in her grandparents’ garden in Nqweba.
Gibson described that as a high energy event equivalent to 92 tons of TNT exploding in the atmosphere.
Reports from eyewitnesses and those who heard the meteorite are still streaming in and Gibson and the other scientists from Rhodes and Nelson Mandela University are continuing their ground searches with volunteers for fragments of the meteorite.
“Having been able to find pieces in an undisturbed location means that everything can be very precisely plotted and we can understand the whole thing better. That’s been the request from Nasa to us to actually try to collect as much information as possible. It’s not just about putting a whole bunch of rocks in a bag: it’s about where did this one that was this size and this shape land, because that can be put through computer modelling to actually see how we can understand the events.”
Gibson said the meteorite was spread over a fairly large area and one of their projects was to try to delineate the area to scientifically “correlate that with the calculations of the angle and the direction. And we can help international science which is focusing on these sorts of events to try and say, well, if we know how they split up in the atmosphere, if we know how they scatter, if we know how big the pieces are, we can start to maybe look at where the threats might be.”
Their research on the meteorite would also determine how “good” the atmosphere had been in protecting the Earth and whether there were pieces that could have gone through a car, or hit someone or even rupture a water tower, said Gibson.
“There are very few events that are so well captured as this one, even though it wasn’t particularly big, it adds to the database. And even though it was a small one they have to determine how dangerous it was.”
After the excitement of the discovery, the hard work has just begun as the multidisciplinary team must ensure that everything is properly documented.
Gibson said their findings would be submitted to the meteorological bulletin database where all meteorites are registered and only once they were satisfied that all criteria had been met, could they release their findings in a scientific paper.
Their research will include what type of rock it is, and from which asteroid belt it came.
The meteorite will also be sent for analysis using “sensitive instruments” in laboratories abroad to determine how long it was exposed in space and how the Sun’s rays penetrated the rock.
“We don’t have the capability here, but we will then be able to say it came from 1cm below the surface, or 10cm, or 50cm below the surface,” he said.