Meteorite
Sutter's Mill meteorite & Encke's Comet
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davidseargent1
The Sutter's Mill CM2 chondrite which fell on April 22, 2012 was one of the few to have had a reliable orbit determination. By comparing the orbit with those of meteors belonging to the May Arietids it seems that the meteorite was an early member of this shower. The May Arietids are part of the Taurid meteor complex which ultimately derive from Comet Encke. Babadzhavov also found that the May Arietids include the small asteroid 1996 SK (=297274)which is presumably a fragment of Encke and was once likely to have been an active comet. Comparing the orbits of Sutter's Mill and 297274 by using Drummond's D' criterion, I found a value of D' = 0.0768. Anything smaller than 0.105 is considered a close orbital match implying physical association (other things being equal). The sequence of events seems to have been; 297274 splits from Encke a few tens of thousands of years ago and Sutter's Mill splits from 297274 a few thousand years later. The cosmic ray exposure age of Sutter's Mill is around 19,000 years, making it about the youngest meteorite known. That timeline is also close to what some researchers consider as the age of the Taurid complex!
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