Vellore (Tamil Nadu): A week after CM Jayalalithaa claimed a man in Tamil Nadu was killed by a meteorite, a lab in Trichy has concluded that the samples recovered from the site are meteorite fragments. According to a preliminary report by National College Instrumentation Facility in Trichy, a Scanning Electron Microscope study on samples retrieved from the campus in Vellore where the blast occurred shows the “presence of carbonaceous chondrites”.
“Carbonaceous denotes objects containing carbon or its compounds and chondrites refer to non-metallic meteorite parts containing mineral granules,” K Anbarasu, a geologist and principal of National College, said. The NCIF is an advanced laboratory set up by the Department of Science and attached to National College.
Meanwhile, a group of scientists from NASA had said that photographs of the site were more consistent with a “land based explosion” and not that of a meteorite strike. However, V Adimurthy, a senior space scientist at ISRO and a two-time chairman of the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, described the findings of the NCIF lab as “very significant”. “The report may be clinching evidence. These findings should be shared with other material science experts,” he said. Anbarasu said the preliminary SEM study was conducted on “small pieces of black material” found near the blast site.
“The crater formed at the spot had been already disturbed by other investigators. So we inspected the entire campus as any meteor incident would scatter several objects across the area before landing. Finally, we spotted several small pieces of this black material, one the size of a paperweight, on the terrace of a building nearby,” Anbarasu said. “It was not a common type of meteorite like an iron meteorite or stony meteorite. Only further tests will give us a detailed answer,” he said. Anbarasu said he visited the spot to collect samples along with a chemist, a biotechnologist and a retired official from the Geological Survey of India.
