Meteorite fragments found in B.C.’s Kootenay region

Researchers from a University of Calgary have found ruins of a meteorite that flashed opposite a sky in early September.

Estimated during a metre far-reaching and weighing adult to 5 tonnes, a asteroid fragment entered Earth’s atmosphere Sept. 4 with a peep of light manifest opposite Alberta, British Columbia and tools of a northwestern United States.

It was estimated to have landed somewhere in B.C.’s East Kootenay region.

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Days later, Alan Hildebrand, an associate highbrow in a university’s dialect of geoscience, released a call to a open for video of a meteorite to improved pinpoint where it landed.

Using shadows from a peep of light to magnitude a angle of descent, researchers narrowed a hunt to a 20-kilometre widen using easterly of Crawford Bay, B.C., to a Kootenay Lake seaside north of a encampment of Riondel.

Led by Hildebrand, a group began searching. On Oct. 29, a initial bit was found on private land in northeastern Crawford Bay by Fabio Ciceri, a visiting master of scholarship tyro from a University of Milan.

“I couldn’t believe it when we found a initial meteorite,” he told CBC News.

“Since we was a child… we demeanour during a sky with amazement. It’s like a dream for me, since we am here [to] study a solar system. It’s formidable to explain.”

The group will continue searching, but snow and cold temperatures will make anticipating other fragments some-more challenging.

Fragments of a meteorite, detected in B.C.’s East Kootenay region, are seen alongside a loonie for scale. (Colin Hall/CBC)

Finding rocks about a distance of a loonie opposite a 20-kilometre widen of timberland is no easy task. 

But this box was opposite since of a video footage. 

“We know what circuit it fell from… and that’s usually been finished a integrate dozen times,” Hildebrand said.

“So we now know what circuit this stone was on and that, of course, tells us a small bit about a structure of a solar system.”

Thousands of fragments, trimming from a distance of a peppercorn to a bowling ball, will have strike a ground — though Hildebrand says many will be in a timberland that blankets a eastern seaside of Kootenay Lake.

He expects people will be anticipating fragments in a area for several years.

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Article source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/university-calgary-researchers-meteorite-found-kootenay-1.4395368?cmp=rss