Three new Swiss meteorites registered
Three new Swiss meteorites have been admitted by the Meteoritical Society, the international body that registers them.
The three meteorites are named after the places where they were found – Mont Sujet in the Bernese Jura, Mürtschenstock in canton Glarus and Chasseron in canton Vaud – according to a press release on Monday from a group of Swiss natural history museums, federal technology institute ETH Zurich and the University of Bern.
The Chasseron meteorite was found in 1959 by a 16-year-old student but it was only in 2017, after reading a number of newspaper articles, that he realised the potential importance of his find and sent it to Bern’s natural history museum.
Eleven meteorites are now officially recognised as Swiss.
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Meteorites are fragments of bodies from our solar system which have fallen to Earth. Most of them come from asteroids, or more rarely from the moon or Mars. They are of high scientific interest and finders should notify natural history or geological museums.
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