Russian scientists find 13kg of extraterrestrial material in Iranian desert

“We planned to send an expedition to the Iranian desert Lut, intending to find a concentration of extraterrestrial material, meteorites,” a member of the Committee on Meteorites at the Academy of Sciences Grokhovsky said.

A team of 4 people, all employees of the laboratory Extra Terra Consortium made a trial expedition to Iran.

According to the scientist, the expedition was successful. “The team managed to collect a sufficient number of extraterrestrial materials, with the support of their Iranian colleagues from the University of Kerman.”

Experts believe that about 80% of the samples which have been brought back from the desert actually have extraterrestrial origins. Russian scientists left part of the found samples in Iran for their colleagues from Kerman University.

Talking about the findings of the team, Grokhosvky told Sputnik Persian that, “During the field work, about 13 kilograms of the samples, which is considered to be meteorite, were found. Half of the found fragments have remained with our Iranian colleagues; the other half has arrived at our test lab. For now the samples have been measured and entered into the catalogue.”

He further said that it turned out that many fragments were remains of a meteor shower. About 70 individual pieces were collected with 10-12 of these fragments belonging to the same type of meteorite.

According to him, examination of the samples will start soon and the process will be time consuming. The professor will be helped by students from the university who are studying cosmic meteorology. The next step for the team will be to investigate how old the meteorite fragments actually are.

“In order to determine the age of the found fragments, the scientist should consider when a fragment was formed in space, when it split from its parent body and how much time it has spent on Earth,” Grokhovsky said.

According to the scientist, meteoritic matter is the same age as our solar system, about 4.5 billion years old.

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