"Ultimate Turning Point": Fireball in the sky raises fundamental questions
Created: 12/19/2022 3:22 p.m
By: Tanya Banner
The fireball was spotted, among others, by the camera of the Global Fireball Observatory in Miquelon Lake Provincial Park in Canada.
© University of Alberta
A fireball over Canada turns out to be particularly exciting for research: Its origin raises fundamental questions.
Alberta - When a bright fireball was observed in the sky over Alberta, Canada, in February 2021, it caused quite a stir as numerous cameras captured the celestial event.
The celestial body that entered the earth's atmosphere was and is also of great interest for research.
In addition to private door cameras, professional meteor cameras such as the Global Fireball Observatory (GFO) recorded the fireball and enabled researchers to study its trajectory in detail.
Scientists from Western University in London, Canada, took on the celestial body and discovered something amazing: Apparently the body, which ended in a fireball above the earth, came from the Oort cloud.
This is a hypothetical, previously undetected collection of astronomical objects at the very edge of the solar system.
Research suggests that it is home to long-period comets like Lovejoy (C/2014 Q2), which occasionally find their way into the interior of the solar system.
These surprises are hidden in the images from the James Webb telescope
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Fireball over Canada: Researchers uncover a big mystery
According to the current state of research, there should only be comets – celestial bodies made of ice, dust and debris – in the Oort cloud.
According to current theories, celestial bodies made of stone should not actually exist there.
According to the researchers, however, the meteoroid that became a fireball over Alberta is clearly rocky: it was a "decimeter-sized" piece of rock weighing about two kilograms, according to the study, which was published in the journal
Nature Astronomy
.
"This discovery supports an entirely different model of solar system formation, one that supports the idea that significant amounts of rocky material coexist with icy objects within the Oort cloud," Western University meteoric physicist Denis Vida said in a statement.
"This result cannot be explained with the currently favored models for the formation of the solar system.
It's a complete game changer.”
Meteorite, meteoroid or meteor - definition of terms:
Meteor:
This refers to the luminous phenomenon that can be seen in the sky when a celestial body enters the earth's atmosphere - for example a shooting star, but also a fireball.
Meteoroid:
This is the technical term for the small celestial body that enters the earth's atmosphere.
Meteorite:
This term describes a stone(s) found on Earth after a meteoroid entered the Earth's atmosphere.
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Stony celestial body from the Oort Cloud - a mystery for researchers
According to a statement by the researchers, the fireball penetrated to a height of 46.5 kilometers - and thus much deeper into the earth's atmosphere than icy objects with a comparable trajectory.
In addition, the fireball broke up just like fireballs that break up into numerous stone meteorites do.
The researchers from Canada now want to solve the puzzle that they discovered.
"We want to explain how this rocky meteoroid got so far away because we want to understand our origins," explains Vida.
"The better we understand the conditions in which the solar system formed, the better we understand what it took for life to arise."
"In 70 years of regular observations of fireballs, this is one of the strangest ever recorded," says Hadrien Devillepoix, a researcher at Curtin University in Australia and overseeing the Global Fireball Observatory (GFO).
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