Mystery 'extinct' space rock found in Sweden

A morsel of never-before-seen alien rock has been dug up in a limestone quarry in Sweden, where it had lain deeply buried for about 470 million years, scientists have said.

The biscuit-sized remains are unlike any other meteorite found on Earth to date, and may shed light on the history and formation of our Solar System, they reported in the journal Nature Communications.

Dubbed Öst 65, it is thought to be a splinter of a potato-shaped rock some 20-30 kilometres (12-19 miles) wide, which had smashed into another much larger body, sprinkling our adolescent planet with debris.

Previously, remnants of only one of the two rocks had been found, in the form of meteorites called chondrites.

But now scientists believe they have unearthed a piece of the second space orb, boosting the theory of a major smash-up between two galactic travellers.

It is thought that the breakup of the bigger chondrite body, about 100-150km across, had yielded a major cluster of rocky debris in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The resultant flux of extraterrestrial material, some of which rained down on Earth, coincided with a massive expansion of invertebrate ocean life at a time our planet's landmass was largely fused together into a supercontinent called Gondwana.

"The single meteorite that we now found... is of a type that we do not know of from today's world," study co-author Birger Schmitz of Lund University in Sweden told AFP.

Along with about 100 chondrite pieces discovered to date, the new alien fragment had sunk to the floor of an ocean covering parts of what today is a limestone quarry in southern Sweden.

'Extinct' space rock? 

"The object contains very high concentrations (compared to Earth materials), of elements such as iridium, which is very rare on Earth," Schmitz explained by email.

"The meteorite also contains high concentrations of rare isotopes of the element Neon" -- and in different proportions than in chondrites.

The team measured telltale signs of cosmic radiation in the meteorite to determine how long it had flown around in space before crashing to Earth.

"Our meteorite fell 470 million years ago," said Schmitz -- more or less the same period as the chondrite fragments.

The mysterious morsel "may be a fragment of the impactor that broke up the (chondrite) parent body," concluded the study.

The extraterrestrial lander may be the first documented example of an "extinct meteorite" -- so called because it's parent body had been entirely consumed by space collisions, meaning no more fragments can fall to Earth today.

Chondrites still drop to our planet every now and then.

The findings mean that today's meteorites -- on which scientists base much of their assumptions about our Solar System's formation -- are not fully representative of what is, and once was, out there.

"Apparently, there is potential to reconstruct important aspects of solar-system history by looking down on Earth sediments, in addition to looking up at the skies," wrote the study authors.

Taken from The Local

Marvel at Sweden's new levitating plants

Sweden is known as a country that likes to push the boundaries of technology, but the latest effort from one Swedish company is even more futuristic than most. Step forward, levitating plants.

Stockholm-based start-up Flyte is using crowdfunding website Kickstarter to fund its ‘zero-gravity growing system’, which consists of a plant pot that hovers above an oak base through magnetic levitation, producing an effect that looks like something straight out of a science fiction movie.
And it appears to have struck a chord. With 15 days to go, backers have already pledged $209,341 to the project – six times its original funding goal. Flyte founder Simon Morris told The Local that the pots are not just an attempt to push the boundaries of technology, but also an experiment to see how plants are affected by growing in mid-air.
“We’re interested in challenging what house plants can do. We have them at home, they provide us with oxygen, but we wanted to raise some questions,” he explained.
“What if plants are affected by magnetism? What happens if the plant rotates too, so sunlight is distributed evenly, rather than the plant growing towards the sun as usually happens? We’re leaving it up to the customers to judge the results.”
It was Sweden’s reputation for pushing boundaries that inspired Morris, originally from New York, to relocate to the country.
“I didn’t move here because of a girl, I moved here because of design. Sweden has a big reputation for being a design and innovation capital for start-ups. It’s a very fertile environment for that,” he noted.
The plant pots use the same technology as Flyte’s previous invention, a levitating light bulb which receives its power through the air. That project managed to achieve seven times its original funding goal, and with the plant pots also doing well, the magnetism enthusiast has good cause to be content.
“We got a great response to our first project and way over-funded our goal. The response to this one has been very positive too,” he beamed.
“We started from humble beginnings in Sweden, an international team of designers with a background in science and engineering, so crowdfunding is a great platform for us to test our ideas,”
“The alternative is that we would need to find an investor, whereas this is so instant.”

Taken from The Local