Laboratory examination of the physical properties of ordinary chondrites
D. Ostrowski, K. Bryson
Meteoritics & Planetary Science
Version of Record online: 04 September 2020
“Meteorites provide vast amounts of information on the makeup and history of the solar system. The physical properties help to understand meteor behavior in the atmosphere, model characteristics of parent bodies, and determine methods to deflect potentially hazardous objects. Density and porosity are two of the most important physical properties. All the examined ordinary chondrite falls have bulk densities and porosities near their respected class averages. Most of the studied Antarctic ordinary chondrites have porosities around 12% or higher caused by weathering, placing them near the top of the range of values for chondritic falls. A trend is observed in acoustic velocity, where any meteorite with porosity over 10% has a longitudinal velocity near half the value of the class average. Low porosity meteorites such as Tenham, Chelyabinsk impact melt, and MIL07036 have velocities well above their class averages. Emissivities across all meteorites follow the trend of decreasing emissivity with increasing temperature.”
