A piece of the Aguas Zarcas meteorite, which fell in the North Zone in April, was donated to the Field Museum in Chicago, United States. This was reported by this institution on Monday. According to Phillip Heck, an official and scientist at the museum, the donation is relevant because this type of meteorite is “really unique.”
The donation was made through Terry Bodreaux, a retired medical executive, who bought it in Costa Rica for an undisclosed figure in the publications made by ABC 7 of Chicago and the Chicago Sun-Times. He even said that it was such a valuable piece of science that it was not worth leaving it in his collection.
The last time a similar meteorite hit the Earth was in Australia in 1969. Terry Boudreaux, a prolific meteorite hunter, said that when he had the opportunity to buy the largest piece of this meteorite that landed in Costa Rica, he took it. Scientists will now study and cryogenically freeze the meteorite in liquid nitrogen to preserve it. Found in a Costa Rican agricultural field at the end of April and preserved before the rainy season began, this meteorite was exposed to very little pollution transmitted by the Earth,”
Heck told ABC 7.
These types of fragments allow us to study the origins of life on Earth and the universe. According to a report published by the University of Costa Rica (UCR) on July 9th, it was a rain of hundreds or thousands of fragments that crossed the national sky southeast to northeast with sightings in the Central Valley, Quepos and San Charles.
The first part was recovered in the neighborhood of La Caporal de Aguas Zarcas. There, a fragment of 1,071 grams hit and broke the roof of a house, damaged a wooden truss, hit a plastic table and broke into small fragments.
During the fall, the meteoroids were subjected to temperatures of 1500 ° C. That melts the rocky surface of the body, but preserves a glassy fusion crust with indicators of the direction of fall, known as regmaglipts (50 grams of weight in the Aguas Zarcas meteorite).
The meteorite fallen in the North Zone is classified as carbonaceous condritic. That is, its components have minerals with water in their structure. In addition, a fine matrix, components with carbon, sulphide minerals with nickel, and with values of general composition and of the oxygen isotopes of the rock, very similar to those of the Sun.
The age is likely to be around 4.560 million years, but to determine it accurately requires more thorough analysis.