New unexpected discovery on the Ryugu asteroid

In recent years, the asteroid Ryugu has fascinated scientists from around the world. Furthermore, Thanks to the Japanese probe Hayabusa-2. Additionally, Furthermore, precious samples have been reported on earth, offering a unique window on the composition and history of the first solid bodies formed in our solar system. In addition, Recently. However, a surprising discovery enriched this already exceptional corpus: the presence of a mineral, the Djerfisherite, which should never have been on Ryugu. Furthermore, This phenomenon raises new exciting questions about the training and evolution of our cosmic environment.

Ryugu. Similarly, a witness to the distant past – New unexpected discovery ryugu asteroid

Ryugu is an asteroid almost a kilometer in diameter today, but it comes from a much larger body, formed about 4.5 billion years ago, at the very beginning of the solar system. Nevertheless, This parent body. Therefore, composed of ice and new unexpected discovery ryugu asteroid rocky materials, developed in a cold region, on the exterior border of the solar system, where the temperature did not exceed 50 ° C. Consequently, This moderate heat allowed the presence of liquid water, but in limited quantities.

Until now. For example, this description gave the image of a homogeneous, cold and aqueous asteroid, little likely to house minerals formed in very different conditions.

The Surprise of the Djerfisherite – New unexpected discovery ryugu asteroid

Djerfisherite is a mineral known mainly in meteorites from the internal solar system. a region closer to the sun, characterized by high temperatures and an environment low in water. This mineral is formed from gas or metallic fluids at more than 350 ° C, far beyond the conditions expected for Ryugu. However. researchers at the University of Hiroshima identified this mineral for the first time on a fragment of the asteroid, which surprised the entire scientific community.

This discovery is comparable to that of a tropical seed found in the Arctic ice: it reveals either the presence of an unexpected local environment on Ryugu. or a transport of materials over very long distances, from the first phases of the formation of the solar system. These hypotheses imply that the composition of Ryugu could be much more complex than what we imagined so far.

Implications for the history of the solar system

Two large tracks explain new unexpected discovery ryugu asteroid this unexpected presence. The first would be that Ryugu integrated. during his training, very different materials, from distinct zones of the primitive solar system. This would suggest an active. rapid mixture of materials in the first million years, a crucial phenomenon to understand how the material was transported and redistributed to the emerging solar system scale.

The second hypothesis favors a more complex thermal evolution of Ryugu. with localized pockets that have reached temperatures high enough to form the djerfisherite. In this scenario. the asteroid would not be a uniformly cold body, but would present heterogeneous chemistry with significant local variations. This idea upsets the image of a simple. uniform asteroid, emphasizing the richness of the processes that affected these small primitive bodies.

Towards a better understanding of the planetary origins

The major interest of this discovery lies in the. information it provides on the first planetary new unexpected discovery ryugu asteroid training processes. Understanding how. where the materials composed asteroids like Ryugu have mixed the formation of the formation models of the planets and the solar system. These bodies are indeed the vestiges of the first rocky assemblies. and their composition contains the history of temperatures, movements and chemical interactions that occurred billions of years ago.

The study led by Professor Masaaki Miyahara stresses that to progress. it is necessary to deepen the research in order to explore these scenarios and to decipher the clues left by these minerals. Each new data extracted from the samples brought back by Hayabusa-2 constitutes one more step towards the reconstruction of. this cosmic puzzle.