Sverdlovsk residents returned home with 20 kilograms of space bodies
In one of the laboratories of the Ural Federal University, there are 18 stones on the table. These are meteorites that hit the Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago. To prove this to us, the scientist picks up a magnet on an elastic rope and brings it to the sample. The rope is being pulled. The magnet sticks firmly to the black cobblestone.
“All meteorites have strong magnetic properties due to their high metal content,” explains Ruslan Kolunin, research engineer at Ural Federal University. - Therefore, the magnet reacts to them in this way.
Ruslan demonstrates the sawn sample. Dots of metal shine on a smooth surface. All of these samples were found by Ural scientists during a two-week expedition to South America. The other day they returned to Yekaterinburg with their "catch", which is now to be carefully studied.
In the Atacama Desert, there are places where it rains once every 400 years. Photo: archive of the Chilean meteorite expedition of UrFU
MACHINE JAMMED IN AMONG DESERT
The expedition began on October 13th. On this day, a group of four UrFU employees arrived in the country of Chile - in the Atacama Desert. This is one of the rare places on Earth where nature itself helps to look for meteorites.
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- In Antarctica, for example, where we were looking for meteorites two years ago, the ice is constantly moving, so all the meteorites eventually bring to the surface, - said Ruslan Kolunin. - In the Atacama Desert, on the contrary, the surface has not changed for millions of years, and precipitation occurs once every 400 years. Therefore, everything that falls on it from above remains in one place for thousands of years. You can take a piece of paper, put it down, come back ten years later and find either a meteorite or cosmic dust on it.
At night, the thermometers dropped to +5 degrees Celsius. Photo: archive of the Chilean meteorite expedition of UrFU
The main difficulty lies in distinguishing a real meteorite, which melted when passing through the earth's atmosphere, from a fragment of a volcanic bomb, of which there are also many in this desert.
“To distinguish them we used a probe with a magnet,” said Ruslan Kolunin. - Meteorites were immediately magnetized. Although we came across one atypical specimen - achondritis. Such meteorites arrive on Earth extremely rarely and are difficult to detect due to their weak magnetic susceptibility.
The first meteorite found by scientists weighed 13.5 kilograms. Photo: archive of the Chilean meteorite expedition of UrFU
For driving in the desert, the expedition members rented a car. At first, by mistake, they took a model with only rear-wheel drive, which is why on the third day of the search they were stuck in the middle of a hot desert, hundreds of kilometers from civilization.
- We were moving off-road and flew into soft sands. The car got bogged down in them, - Ruslan recalls. - They pushed out for more than an hour. Fortunately, everything worked out. But after this incident, we realized that if we want to go deeper into the desert, we need to change the car and take a car with four-wheel drive.
THE FIRST METEORITE TO SHARE WITH CHILEAN SCIENTISTS
The members of the expedition lived in a tent. Every day they put it in a new place. At seven o'clock they woke up. It is still dark in the desert at this time. Because of the high mountains, the Sun rises above the Atakama only at 08.00.
- Immediately it became much warmer. The temperature contrast in the desert is generally very strong. At night +5 degrees Celsius, and in the daytime +30, - said Alexander Pastukhovich, the leader of the expedition. - At eight in the morning we were already moving by car. While driving, they looked out the window, looking for large accumulations of stones. When found, they stopped and started looking for meteorites among them. Each of us armed with a probe and walked in his own direction. Sometimes we diverged several kilometers from each other. In order not to get lost, we kept in touch by radio. It was getting dark at 18.00. So we pitched our tent.
They found the first meteorite on the very first day of the search - a sample weighing 13.5 kilograms. True, it was not possible to bring it to Yekaterinburg entirely. The celestial body was sawed, and part of it was given to Chilean colleagues from the local university in order to establish ties with him.
“At first we worked in the area of the city of Kalamo, there are white sands where meteorites are clearly visible,” said Ruslan Kolunin. - Then we moved to the area of the city of Antofagast. This is closer to the ocean. There was once a seabed and sand dunes.
In total, the Urals found 18 samples in the Atacama Desert.
Scientists note that in comparison with the expedition to Antarctica, the search for meteorites in Atacama was much easier. The researchers traveled by car, not on foot, and returned from the desert to the city every four days to replenish food and water supplies. But the meteorites found in Atacama are inferior in safety to the meteorites that have been stored for thousands of years in ice on the southernmost continent.
“Now we have to make sure in laboratory conditions that all the samples we found are meteorites,” said Ruslan Kolunin. - To do this, you need to make thin sections (a plate of a mineral glued to glass - Ed.) To see their structure. We admit that some samples may not be meteorites. After that, various studies will begin to learn more about each sample. After that, they will appear in the international catalog of meteorites.
Danil Svechkov
