Boorama

BOORAMA (بورما) meteorite fall (~13.658 kg, CO3, S2, W0) of the bolide above Boorama, Awdal (Somaliland/Somalia) and Laylakaal (Ethiopia) at ~ 3:12 a.m. EAT (~ 0:12 UTC) on 6 December 2023

At 3:12 a.m. local (0:12 UTC) on 6 December 2023 the Mahamed family heard several shattering noises and loud cracks of thunder accompanied by a bright fireball illuminating the area.

Shortly after they heard a hissing noise near the house from something falling to the ground near location 9°56’24.0″N, 43°09’07.0″E. During the night they did not dare to leave the house. After sunrise, a relative went outside to check the reason for the noises. He saw something black in the distance lying on the white sandy ground of a smooth plain close to Boorama airfield. He found a fusion-crusted regmaglypted meteorite mass weighing 431 g.

On the same day he called his nephew Mahamed Ahiin who was living in Halle an der Saale in Germany. He suggested that the object could be a meteorite and around three weeks after the fall he contacted Stephan Decker from Oberwesel in Germany. Then Mahamed Ahiin flew to Somalia to visit his family and brought the meteorite to Germany. Decker bought the meteorite on 6 February 2024. On 7 February 2024 Decker was informed about the existence of another ~100-gram individual, which he also purchased a few days later. In late February, more material was recovered by the Mahamed family and in mid-March 2024 several other meteorite masses near Laylakaal in eastern Ethiopia were reported, indicating a strewn field length of ~14 km and a width of about 4 km west of Boorama. Several individuals and some fragments have been recovered, weighing between 5 and 200 grams. Decker acquired 3158 grams of meteorites from the Boorama fall until 15 August 2024.

After cutting the type specimen for the analysis and classification the 431-gram meteorite weighs slightly less than 400 grams.

Short-lived nuclides have been measured by D. Degering at VKTA Dresden. Detection of 10 short-lived nuclides with half-lives ranging from 53 d (⁷Be) to 705,000 a (²⁶Al) agree with the description of the Boorama fall history. The good agreement for ⁴⁶Sc (half-life 84 d), ⁵⁶Co (77 d) and ⁵⁸Co (71 d) show that the fall cannot have taken place before mid September 2023.

On 11 April 2024 the fall was registered in the Meteoritical Bulletin Database as Boorama.