Fireball traced to a strange rocky meteoroid from the edge of the Solar System
Reported by Robert Lea
A rocky meteoroid that exploded over Canada last year was more extraordinary than it first seemed: it originated from the outer Solar System, where scientists thought only icy bodies exist. A cavalcade of astronomers caught images and videos of the meteoroid as it exploded over Alberta. By studying this data, researchers have determined that the meteoroid broke apart like a rocky object, surviving deeper into Earth’s atmosphere than icy objects on similar trajectories. The analysis also suggested that the meteoroid came from the Oort Cloud, far beyond Pluto. Discovering a rocky body from this region could rewrite existing theories of how the Solar System formed. “This discovery supports an entirely different model of the formation of the Solar System, one which backs the idea that significant amounts of rocky material coexist with icy objects within the Oort Cloud,” Denis Vida, a meteor physics specialist at Western University in Canada, said. “This result is not explained by the currently favoured Solar System formation models. It’s a complete game changer.”