[Rockhounds] Boomerang meteorite may be the 1st space rock to leave Earth and return

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

A dark reddish-brown stone, picked up from the Sahara desert in Morocco a
few years ago, appears to be an Earth rock that was flung into space where
it stayed for thousands of years before returning home – surprisingly
intact.

If scientists are right about this, the rock will officially be named the
first meteorite to boomerang from Earth.

The discovery team's work was *presented*
<https://conf.goldschmidt.info/goldschmidt/2023/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/20218>
last
week at an international geochemistry conference and has not yet been
published in a peer-reviewed journal.

"I think there is no doubt that this is a meteorite," said Frank Brenker, a
geologist at the Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany, who was not
involved with the new study. "It is just a matter of debate if it is really
from Earth."

Early diagnostic tests show the unusual stone features the same chemical
composition as volcanic rocks on Earth. Interestingly, however, a few of
its elements seem to have been altered into lighter forms of themselves.
These lighter versions are known to occur only upon interacting with
energetic *cosmic rays*
<https://www.space.com/32644-cosmic-rays.html#:~:text=Because%20Earth's%20atmosphere%20absorbs%20most,small%20fraction%20reaches%20ground%20level.>
in
space, which provided one of two key pieces of evidence declaring the
rock's trip beyond Earth, geologists say.
https://www.space.com/boomerang-meteorite-left-earth-and-returned