The tale of the Chinguetti meteorite is a captivating mystery. A 4.5-kilogram iron rock purportedly retrieved from the summit of a colossal iron mountain spanning 100 meters in Africa in 1916. This iron mountain is believed to be a colossal meteorite.
Despite various searches, the existence of this larger parent meteorite has never been confirmed. Now, a team of researchers is once again delving into the investigation.
If indeed it exists, this iron mountain would represent the largest meteorite on Earth within a certain range, and scientists from the Imperial College London and the University of Oxford in England are keen to employ magnetic anomaly maps akin to large iron blocks to attempt its discovery.
To kickstart the endeavor, the smaller meteorite fragment was initially discovered by French consul officer Captain Gaston Ripert, who claimed to have been blindfolded and guided to the 'iron hill' by a local tribal chief.
The meteorite's name was derived from the nearby town of Chinguetti, in Mauritania, northwest Africa. All subsequent efforts to locate the giant iron mountain that was originally part of it, until the 1990s, have failed to pinpoint the whereabouts of where Ripert was taken.
Furthermore, a study in 2001 concluded that the iron-stone mesosiderite fragments couldn't have originated from a mass with a volume larger than 1.6 meters, based on chemical analyses of the metal.
Was Captain Ripert lying? Or simply mistaken? Perhaps neither, say the latest researchers undertaking the mission to find the Chinguetti meteorite. The lack of impact craters could be due to the meteorite falling at an extremely low angle before hitting the ground, for instance.
Previous searches might have yielded nothing because the iron mountain was buried beneath sand, or because the instruments used were inaccurate, or because the search area was in the wrong place based on Ripert's vague instructions. These are all possibilities, say the scientists in a new paper.
Perhaps most intriguingly, Ripert specifically described features on the iron hill. The captain detailed finding metal 'needles' that were attracted but he failed to remove them with blows from his smaller meteorite sample.
The authors of this paper speculate that this structure might be a nickel-iron phase known as the 'Thomson structure'. It's unlikely that Ripert fabricated such observations in 1916.
For the first time, researchers here are employing digital elevation models, radar data, and interviews with local camel riders to narrow down the area where Ripert might have been taken, based on his accounts of the journey at that time.
By using the sand dune elevations that might conceal the giant meteorite as a guide, the team has identified areas of interest and requested aeromagnetic survey data for that location from the Ministry of Energy, Oil, and Mining of Mauritania. So far, access to this data hasn't been granted. find cheat eggy party on this site.
An alternative approach is to scan the area on foot to search for the long-lost meteorite, although this could take several weeks.
"If the results are negative, Ripert's story explanation will remain unresolved, and the issue of the needles, as well as the chance finding of mesosiderite, will persist," write the researchers.
These new findings from the researchers have not yet been peer-reviewed but are available on the preprint server ArXiv.
