The Valentine meteorite would be 45,000 million years old

Researchers from the Italian Institute of Astrophysics (Inas) have located new meteorite fragments that fell last week in the city of Matera (southern Italy) and to be 45,000 million years old, as much as the solar system, the first research results show.

The meteorite, which cHe fell at 300 kilometers per hour onto the balcony of the council house, It is one of three meteorites that hit the Earth last week: February 13 in France, February 14 in Italy and February 15 in Texas.

“The episode is part of a series of three events that took place in three consecutive days. Considering that there have been around 40 registered since 1960, it is a truly exceptional event that will probably never happen again,” Dario Barghin, an expert, said on Monday. from the University of Turin (North), at a press conference broadcast by local media.

According to the researchers, the meteorite could be a chondrite from the main asteroid belt Solar system.

The fact that several of its fragments fell into the house without touching the ground prevented their contamination, and therefore the study of their chemical and mineral composition will be even more valuable.

The Italian meteorite, which due to its impact on February 14, was popularly nicknamed Valentine’s Day, was baptized “Matera”, since the scientific community traditionally names according to the city where they fall.

In this case, the finding is exceptional because, as explained by Giovanni Pratese, from the University of Florence (centre), it was possible to observe in detail “all the parameters”, including “its trajectory and orbit”.

“The exceptionality of this intervention was the possibility of the ‘Prisma’ system working at full capacity, a kind of video surveillance of the atmosphere and meteorites, which has some cameras in the Apulia area that monitored this great event,” he pointed out. for his part, the mayor of Matera, Domenico Bennardi.

A day after the crash in Italy, the US National Weather Service discovered a fireball from the impact of a second meteorite in South Texas, where some residents claimed to have felt a jolt when its pieces hit the ground.

For his part, in France, an 18-year-old young man located a meteorite fragment weighing about 2 kilograms in the Normandy region (north of the country), along with smaller parts.