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Re: Eucrites question
Dear Steve,
It seams the scientific community is fairly united in agreement that
ALL the Eucrites are from Vesta. (as well as the Howardites &
Dioginites, though, there are probably some few dissenters).
When Ibitira first "came out" I was told by Michael Casper that several
"heavy hitters" in the research community (holding positions at several
"name" universities - which he repeated, but whom he said had made it
clear they wanted to remain anonamous until reaching difinitive
conclusions) had reportedly said they thought it was from Mars, the
Moon, etc. This, aparently, was a situation in which they were either
mistaken or one in which I had been given "erronious" information -
either way, there appears to be relatively unanimous agreement that all
members of the '"HED" group are from Vesta.
One dissenter had argued that his calculations, based on the gross
total weight accounted for by all the HEDs added togeather, and assuming
the Earth only receives a given percentage of such material, would
require that Vesta would have to have a crater over half the size of its
diameter to have supplied all the HEDs - Dr. Richard Binzel (of MIT) and
others published their findings in Science, September 5, 1997, Vol. 277
- pp 1405-1572. They had discovered, through Use of the Hubble , with
exceptionally favorable conditions in 1996, that Vesta did, indeed, have
just such a crator, (460 Kilometers in diameter & 13 kilometers deep),
large enough to account for ALL the HED material AND all of the other
small "Vesta-like asteroids" on record.
Best wishes, Michael
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