The meteorite, about 4.5 billion years old and weighing about a ton, is a rare exhibit of the State Museum of Turkmenistan, which is kept in the exposition of the Department of Nature and Local History, the Neutral Turkmenistan newspaper writes.
The meteorite fell on the territory of Turkmenistan in June 1998, 7 km south of the city of Kunyaurgench at 5:30pm local time. Eyewitnesses said that a huge space object landed on the edge of a cotton field where people were working, a few dozen meters from a house. By lucky chance no one was injured.
Many locals who witnessed the fireball’s flight and its fall claimed that the body, which had been moving for a few seconds, had exploded at a high altitude before a portion separated from a massive dark cloud and flew down, accompanied by a loud noise that sounded like a whistle and a deafening crack.
Falling to earth, the space stranger formed a funnel with a diameter of up to six meters, and the meteorite itself buried to a depth of 3.5 m.
First, a team of the Dashoguz division of the Civil Defense and Rescue Department arrived at the place, and then a group of scientists led by Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Seyid Mukhamednazarov visited the location. They found out that the object that fell from the sky was a meteorite.
The Central Laboratory of the State Corporation “Turkmen Geology” conducted the initial fundamental studies of Kunyaurgench meteorite, while Magtymguly Turkmen State University continued the research.
According to the results of studying the chemical composition of the main mineral rock mass using gravimetric, atomic absorption, spectral and other types of analysis, it was found that the metal part of the meteorite includes iron (a third of the stone), nickel and cobalt, in total more than a dozen minerals that could only be formed in space.
The weight of the Kunyaurgench meteorite is 820 kg, presumably the total weight, taking into account the fragments that broke off from the main monolithic mass, should have been up to 1200 kg. The approximate age of the meteorite is 4.5 billion years.
The Kunyaurgench meteorite was Turkmenistan’s fifth in forty years of records. Additionally, there are “Kabakly,” which was discovered in 1965 in the northern Karakum at the Yenekuduk well; “Bahardok,” which was found in 1978 while conducting field geophysical work; and “Akmolla” and “Dengli,” which are also named after the location of discovery. They weigh significantly less than the Kunyaurgench meteorite, which is acknowledged as the biggest meteorite to have been discovered on CIS territory in the past century. ///nCa, 26 June 2023
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