'Meteorite glass' picked up in Antarctica came from Vietnam

A giant meteorite may have fallen into the land of Vietnam today and released beautiful glass marbles to the South Pole.

52 pale yellow meteorite marbles were found in the Antarctic Transantarctic Mountains . It is identified as being of the same origin as many other glass marbles found scattered throughout Australia and South Asia.

Recently found meteorite glass - (photo provided by the team).

These beautiful glass tablets are called tektites . Scientists have examined the concentration of potassium and sodium within them, thereby calculating where they come from. Because meteorite glass has different concentrations of constituents depending on their distance from where the collision occurred.

The marbles farther away are often hotter than others when released and therefore their internal potassium and sodium concentrations are significantly reduced, according to research team member - Matthias Van Ginneken (Vrije University, Belgium), analysis. It was the new balls discovered in Antarctica that helped them complete the algorithm.

Transantarctic Mountains in Antarctica, where 52 meteorite glass crystals were found - (photo: NASA).

Another member of the research team - Matthew Genge, a lecturer on Earth and Planetary Science at Imperial College London, said the new discovery has revealed the location of a meteorite with a diameter of up to 20km falling into the earth. about 800,000 years ago. According to calculations, it has fallen somewhere in Southeast Asia, but the greatest probability is on the territory of Vietnam today .

The area found the most meteorite glass, which spreads from South Asia to Australia, about 14,000 km ^{2 wide} . The central meteorite pit is located in Vietnam, meaning that many glass marbles have been shot as far as 11,000km!