Sayh al Uhaymir 169 (SaU 169) is a 206 gram lunar meteorite found in the Sayh al Uhaymir region of the

Sultanate of Oman Oman, officially the Sultanate of Oman, is a country located on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in West Asia and the Middle East. It shares land borders with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Oman’s coastline ...

in January 2002. This stone is an impact-melt

breccia Breccia ( , ; ) is a rock composed of large angular broken fragments of minerals or Rock (geology), rocks cementation (geology), cemented together by a fine-grained matrix (geology), matrix. The word has its origins in the Italian language ...

with exceedingly high concentrations of

thorium Thorium is a chemical element; it has symbol Th and atomic number 90. Thorium is a weakly radioactive light silver metal which tarnishes olive grey when it is exposed to air, forming thorium dioxide; it is moderately soft, malleable, and ha ...

and other

incompatible element In petrology and geochemistry, an incompatible element is one that is unsuitable in size and/or charge to the cation sites of the minerals in which it is included. It is defined by a partition coefficient between rock-forming minerals and melt ...

phosphorus Phosphorus is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol P and atomic number 15. All elemental forms of phosphorus are highly Reactivity (chemistry), reactive and are therefore never found in nature. They can nevertheless be prepared ar ...

rare-earth element The rare-earth elements (REE), also called the rare-earth metals or rare earths, and sometimes the lanthanides or lanthanoids (although scandium and yttrium, which do not belong to this series, are usually included as rare earths), are a set o ...

s, and the three most important naturally occurring

radioactive Radioactive decay (also known as nuclear decay, radioactivity, radioactive disintegration, or nuclear disintegration) is the process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by radiation. A material containing unstable nuclei is conside ...

elements,

potassium Potassium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol K (from Neo-Latin ) and atomic number19. It is a silvery white metal that is soft enough to easily cut with a knife. Potassium metal reacts rapidly with atmospheric oxygen to ...

, thorium, and

uranium Uranium is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Ura ...

, have been segregated in the liquid phase when the lunar

mineral In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid substance with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.John P. Rafferty, ed. (2011): Mi ...

s crystallized. The impact that eventually sent this stone to the Earth is dated at 3.9 billion years and could be the Imbrium impact. It collided with the Earth less than 9,700 years ago. It is complete, a light gray-greenish rounded stone, dimensions and mass , found on January 16, 2002, in the central desert of Oman at 20° 34.391' N and 57° 19.400' E. According to geologist

Edwin Gnos The name Edwin means "wealth-friend". It comes from (wealth, good fortune) and (friend). Thus the Old English form is Ēadwine, a name widely attested in early medieval England. Edwina is the feminine form of the name. Notable people and char ...

and coworkers, the meteorite's origin can be pinpointed to the vicinity of the Lalande impact crater; isotopic analysis shows a complex history of four distinct lunar impacts: "Crystallization of the impact melt occurred at 3909 ± 13 Ma, followed by exhumation by a second impact at 2800 Ma, which raised the sample to a regolith position at unconstrained depth. A third impact at 200 Ma moved the material closer to the lunar surface, where it mixed with solar-wind–containing regolith. It was launched into space by a fourth impact at <0.34 Ma".Gnos, Edwin, et al., 2004
Pinpointing the Source of a Lunar Meteorite: Implications for the Evolution of the Moon

Science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

30 July 2004: Vol. 305 no. 5684 pp. 657–659. .

External links

*https://archive.today/20030604170334/http://epsc.wustl.edu/admin/resources/meteorites/sau169.html

References

{{Meteorites by name Meteorites found in Oman Lunar meteorites 2002 in Oman 2002 in science January 2002 in Asia

See also

External links

References