“Meteorite glass” picked up in Antarctica from Vietnam
A giant meteorite may have crashed into what is now Vietnam and released beautiful glass marbles all the way to Antarctica.
Fifty-two pale yellow meteorite glass marbles have been found in the Transantarctic Mountains in Antarctica. They are believed to be from the same source as many other glass marbles found scattered across Australia and South Asia.
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| Meteorite glass beads have just been found - (photo provided by the research team). |
These beautiful glasses are called tektites. Scientists have measured the potassium and sodium levels in them, which helps them figure out where they came from. This is because meteorite glasses have different concentrations of different elements depending on their distance from the impact site.
The marbles that traveled farther were hotter than the others when they were released, and so their potassium and sodium concentrations were significantly reduced, according to team member Matthias Van Ginneken (Vrije Universiteit, Belgium). It was the newly discovered marbles in Antarctica that helped them complete the algorithm.
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| The Transantarctic Mountains in Antarctica, where 52 meteorite glass pieces were found - (photo: NASA). |
Another member of the research team, Matthew Genge, a lecturer in Earth and planetary sciences at Imperial College London, said the new discovery revealed the location of a 20km-wide meteorite that hit Earth about 800,000 years ago. According to calculations, it fell somewhere in Southeast Asia, with the highest probability being on the land of present-day Vietnam.
The area where most meteorite glass is found is an area stretching from South Asia to Australia, about 14,000km wide.2. The central crater is located in Vietnam, meaning many of the glass marbles were shot as far as 11,000km away.
