The fragment entering the earth’s atmosphere is heated to a high temperature. The ice contained within the fragment would ultimately be heated to a high temperature and melt into liquid water. Likewise, if the liquid water is heated enough, it will evaporate into water vapor.
The initial phase change would be …show more content…
Before we decide on what the parent asteroid may have been we would first need to know if the composition of the asteroid in our sample was consistent throughout. If there are obvious lines separating the two materials then it can be assumed that this asteroid is the result of a collision between two other asteroids. However, if it is consistent throughout then it would have taken much larger forces to create that kind of mixture: enough heat to melt the original two asteroids and enough pressure to form them without breaking them down into different elements.
If we assume that each type of asteroid (C and M) come from different sources, it would be rare to find one that came from the same source with multiple compositions. Because of this it is extremely likely that this sample is a result of some crossing over between the outer and middle layers of the belt. A collision at some point may have created the parent asteroid this sample was taken from.
The biggest thing I would like to see about this asteroid is how the different materials are mixed: are they spread throughout the rock or layered one on top of another. Also, the density at which the carbon is packed could tell us about the heat and pressure used to create that stone, whereas the type of metal could also help to explain its