Meteorites Store a Magnetic Memory of the Early Solar System - by BrianKoberlein
Although they are thought of as rare, meteorites are actually quite common. About 40,000 tons of meteorites strike Earth every day. Most of them land in the ocean, and most are quite tiny, but they are still common enough that hobbyists all over the world find meteorites all the time. The most common place to find them is in arid regions where their coloring can stand out from the terrain. But even then a meteorite can be difficult to distinguish from terrestrial rocks.
There are, however, a few ways to distinguish them, and one of them stems from the fact that meteorites are usually magnetic. Because of this, meteorite hunters often carry a small hand magnet. If you swipe the magnet over a suspected meteorite, it will generally be more attracted to the magnet than nearby material. But as a recent study shows, this magnetic trick can also ruin important data about the formation of our solar system.
Meteorites are fragments of debris from asteroid collisions. Sometimes these fragments were flung from the Moon or Mars due to large impacts, but usually they are the debris from asteroids colliding with each other. They are part of the remnant material from when the solar system formed. They formed within the protoplanetary disk of the Sun and interacted with the early Sun’s magnetic field as they formed. Because of this, meteorites carry a chemical and magnetic record of their origin.
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