We are a research team at VUB's AMGC lab, focused on reconstructing Earth's intake of extraterrestrial material across geological time. Work funded by the ERC.
The FLUX Team (ERC Project)
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This week’s Micrometeorite Monday: a nice S-type cosmic spherule (barred olivine, BO) from the Sør Rondane Mountains! Other than showing the classic BO parallel olivine striations, a small Fe-Ni bead is visible on the left side ☄️
@amgc-vub.bsky.social
Image credit goes to Dr. Thilo Hasse at the @mfnberlin.bsky.social ☄️
This week’s Micrometeorite Monday: a pretty S-type cosmic spherule from the Atacama desert! This sample is a textbook example of a barred-olivine (BO)-type cosmic spherule, as can be seen with its characteristic olivine striations ☄️
@amgc-vub.bsky.social
The FLUX Team (ERC Project)
This week’s Micrometeorite Monday: an I-type cosmic spherule from the Sør Rondane Mountains! I-types likely form from metallic iron–nickel dust released from asteroids. As they enter Earth’s atmosphere, they melt, oxidize and recrystallize, forming spherules of FeNi-oxides ☄️
@amgc-vub.bsky.social
This week’s Micrometeorite Monday: a nice S-type cosmic spherule from the Atacama Desert, more specifically of the Porphyritic olivine (PO)-type. It shows characteristic equant olivine crystals set in glass, along with some pretty magnetite crystals! ☄️
@amgc-vub.bsky.social
This week’s Micrometeorite Monday: another nice S-type cosmic spherule from the Atacama! This rare glass (V)-type specimen is composed almost entirely of silicate glass, formed at extremely high temperatures and cooled too quickly to recrystallize into silicate minerals ☄️
@amgc-vub.bsky.social
This week’s Micrometeorite Monday: an S-type cosmic spherule (porphyritic olivine, PO) featuring a large chromite grain (light-grey inclusion). Extraterrestrial chromites are highly resistant to weathering, making them useful at reconstructing the past extraterrestrial flux! ☄️
@amgc-vub.bsky.social
This week’s Micrometeorite Monday: a nice I-type cosmic spherule from the Sør Rondane Mountains! This sample exhibits a relatively shiny, metallic lustre due to its Fe-oxide content, a feature characteristic of I-types ☄️
Image credit: T. Hasse (@mfnberlin.bsky.social)
@amgc-vub.bsky.social
This sample was originally featured in the following article by Schmitz et al. (2019). It's a great read if you wish to learn more about the use of extraterrestrial chromites in reconstructing the ancient extraterrestrial flux! ☄️ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
This week’s Micrometeorite Monday: a "large" S-type cosmic spherule (barred olivine, BO) recovered from the Sør Rondane Mountains! Its parallel striations are the signature feature of the BO subtype, the most common S-type! ☄️
Credit: Dr. Hasse (@mfnberlin.bsky.social)
@amgc-vub.bsky.social
