Strange Meteorites That Fell Near Berlin, Looked Like Rocks on Earth Finally Identified

Earlier this year, meteorites fell near Berlin and experts had difficulty identifying them because they looked like rocks usually found on Earth. However, they finally identified it.

Meteorites in Berlin Are Aubrites

An official categorization confirms what many had surmised based only on the pictures of the unusual meteorites that fell close to Berlin on Jan. 21, 2024. They are from the uncommon category known as "aubrites" from asteroid 2024 BX1.

"Based on this evidence, we were able to make a rough classification relatively quickly," said Dr. Ansgar Greshake, scientific head of the museum's meteorite collection. "This underlines the immense importance of collections for research. So far, there is only material from eleven other observed falls of this type in meteorite collections worldwide."

The meteorite's name derives from a similar meteorite that landed on Sept. 14, 1836, in the French commune of Aubrés. There is a piece of that in the museum collection.

The experts had a hard time distinguishing the meteorites because of their appearance. They looked like regular rocks found on Earth.

"They were devilishly difficult to find because, from a distance, they look like other rocks on Earth," said SETI Institute meteor astronomer Dr. Peter Jenniskens. "Close up, not so much."

In the days that followed the fall, Jenniskens traveled from San Francisco to Berlin with Museum für Naturkunde (MfN) researcher Dr. Lutz Hecht to search the fields just south of the village of Ribbeck. He led a team of students and staff from the MfN, the Technische Universität Berlin, the Freie Universität Berlin, and the Deutches zentrum für Luft und Raumfahrt.

Even with excellent guidance from meteor scientists, Drs. Jenniskens admitted that their search team initially could not easily spot them on the ground. This was due to the work of Pavel Spurný, Jiří Borovička, and Lukáš Shrbený of the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, who calculated how the strong winds blew the meteorites and suggested that these could be extremely uncommon enstatite-rich meteorites based on the light emitted by the fireball.

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What Are Aubrites?

The meteorites feature a mainly transparent glass crust, in contrast to other meteorites that have a thin layer of black glass formed by air heat. It was only after a Polish team of meteorite hunters had located the initial find and told experts what to look for that they were able to locate the meteorites. Following that, students Dominik Dieter and Cara Weihe of Freie Universität produced their initial discoveries quite fast.

The initial classification and searcher, Christopher Hamann of the Museum für Naturkunde, claims that aubrites do not resemble the typical meteorite people associate with the mineral. Aubrites are mostly composed of magnesium silicates forsterite and enstatite and have a more gray granite-like appearance.

Its glassy crust, which is typically an excellent way to identify meteorites, is entirely different from that of the majority of other meteorites, and it has very little iron. As a result, aubrites are challenging to find in the field.