Meteorites and magnets

A popular and simple method of testing whether and what a boulder is a meteorite unintentionally damages the invaluable information it contains. Using rare earth magnets such as neodymium completely erases the magnetic record in meteorites and can create a new one.Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States and Paris Cite University in France discovered it. Because many meteorites that have fallen to Earth have significant iron content, this means that we are missing important data on how the magnetic fields in space have changed these meteorites over billions of years.

Touching an asteroid with a magnet causes its magnetic record to disappear almost instantly.
– Writes a team of MIT researchers.

Space stones provide invaluable data on the formation and evolution of planets. Their work makes it possible to study accretion, thermal evolution, differentiation of planetesimals and others in the protoplanetary disk. However, the potential of these magnetic records to advance planetary science is severely limited by the limitations imposed by techniques used by meteorite hunters.

The influence of the magnetic field can have an interesting effect on minerals. When a rock is formed, magnetic mineral crystals can align with the magnetic field and in some cases become magnetized themselves, providing a record of the strength and alignment of the magnetic field that caused it. On Earth, the study of these records is known as paleomagnetism. Scientists use it to understand the history of the Earth’s magnetic field and how it has evolved and changed over time. The world beneath our feet is rich in such records, and we have been able to learn a lot about our home planet.

Other rocky worlds we could potentially reach in the future may have similar records. Let’s take Mars, at least. Today, the processes that created its magnetic field billions of years ago are no longer active. However, analysis of meteorites that sometimes fly to Earth can reveal the secrets of its global magnetic field and the reasons for its disappearance.

Fortunately, there are already methods that can help identify meteorites without destroying the information inside.