ALBERT

Description: On October 7, 2008, the asteroid 2008 TC3 exploded as it entered the Earth’s atmosphere, producing significant dust (in the atmosphere) and delivering thousands of stones in a strewn field in Sudan, collectively known as the Almahata Sitta (AhS) stones. About 600 fragments were officially recovered in 2008 and 2009. Further rocks were collected since the fall event by local people. From these stones, 249 were classified at the Institut für Planetologie in Münster (MS) known as MS‐xxx or MS‐MU‐xxx AhS subsamples. Most of these rocks are ureilitic in origin (168; 67%): 87 coarse‐grained ureilites, 60 fine‐grained ureilites, 15 ureilites with variable texture/mineralogy, four trachyandesites, and two polymict breccias. We identified 81 non‐ureilitic fragments, corresponding to 33% of the recovered samples studied in Münster. These included chondrites, namely 65 enstatite chondrites (43 EL; 22 EH), 11 ordinary chondrites (OC), one carbonaceous chondrite, and one unique R‐like chondrite. Furthermore, three samples represent a unique type of enstatite achondrite. Since all AhS stones must be regarded as individual specimens independent from each other, the number of fresh ureilite and enstatite chondrite falls in our meteorite collections has been increased by several hundred percent. Overall, the samples weigh between 〈1 and 250 g and have a mean mass of ~15 g. If we consider—almost 15 years after the fall—the mass calculations, observations during and after the asteroid entered the atmosphere, the mineralogy of the C1 stones AhS 91A and AhS 671, and the experimental work on fitting the asteroid spectrum (e.g., Goodrich et al., 2019; Jenniskens et al., 2010; Shaddad et al., 2010), the main portion of the meteoroid was likely made of the fine‐grained (carbonaceous) dust and was mostly lost in the atmosphere. In particular, the fact that C1 materials were found has important implications for interpreting asteroid 2008 TC3's early spectroscopic results. Goodrich et al. (2019) correctly suggested that if scientists had not recovered the “water‐free” samples (e.g., ureilites, enstatites, and OC) from the AhS strewn field, 2008 TC3 would have been assumed to be a carbonaceous chondrite meteoroid. Considering that the dominating mass of the exploding meteoroid consisted of carbonaceous materials, asteroid 2008 TC3 cannot be classified as a polymict ureilite; consequently, we state that the asteroid was a polymict carbonaceous chondrite breccia, specifically a polymict C1 object that may have formed by late accretion at least 50–100 Ma after calcium–aluminum‐rich inclusions.

Description: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001659

Description: Alexander von Humboldt Foundation http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100005156

Description: How did the Greeks respond to the experiences of uncertainty that they so acutely made in the aftermath of Alexander the Great's world-changing conquest of the Persian Empire? How were old values upheld and reshaped? And how did the societies of Greek cities and royal courts accommodate the overwhelming newfound power of Greek individuals? By developing a custom methodology, this book tries to shed new light on the complex textuality of the period of the Diadochi, the successors of Alexander. In four case studies, new readings are presented of Theophrastus Characters and Xenophon's Cyropaedia, but also of the substantial early Hellenistic anecdotal material, as well as the Colossus of Rhodes. The studies are united by an interest in how these texts cast the relationships between individuals and how they constructed various media of interrelation, such as money, friendship, women and the divine. Reading these texts on these terms reveals how values were renegotiated through paradoxes and inverted stories that subtly reshaped the utopias of the 4th century BCE. Overall, the study's hypothesis is that this particular brand of social storytelling contributed to the stabilisation of the nascent Hellenistic world by providing new visions of society capable of accommodating individual power and offering a new sense of control and place.