Meteorites

Fragment of the Stubenberg meteorite

Image: Jan-Peter Kasper (University of Jena)

We study the meteorites to explore the formation of the Solar System 4,5 billion years ago. Meteorits, interstellar dust and samples which are brought to Earth by spacecrafts document processes that have led to the formation of Planetesimals of the Solar System. They in turn represent the building material of the Earth and made the ingredients for life (e.g. water) available. The study of meteorites from larger bodies like the Moon or Mars provides direct information on early processes that are in general not accessible by telescopic observations or space crafts.

Selected publications

Harries, D., & Bischoff, A. (2020). Petrological evidence for the existence and disruption of a 500 km-sized differentiated planetesimal of enstatite-chondritic parentage. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 548, 116506. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2020.116506External link

Matsumoto, T., Harries, D., Langenhorst, F., Miyake, A., & Noguchi, T. (2020). Iron whiskers on asteroid Itokawa indicate sulfide destruction by space weathering. Nature Communications, 11(1), 1117. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14758-3External link

Harries, D., & Langenhorst, F. (2018). Carbide-metal assemblages in a sample returned from asteroid 25143 Itokawa: Evidence for methane-rich fluids during metamorphism. Geochimica Et Cosmochimica Acta, 222, 53-73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gca.2017.10.019External link

Pang, R. L., Harries, D., Pollok, K., Zhang, A. C., & Langenhorst, F. (2018). Vestaite, (Ti4+Fe2+)Ti34+O9, a new mineral in the shocked eucrite Northwest Africa 8003. American Mineralogist, 103(9), 1502-1511. https://doi.org/10.2138/am-2018-6522External link