A little money for many ideas

The phenomenon of reddening of some asteroids' spectra with respect to their fragments arriving on Earth (meteorites) has been explained by the presence of very hard metal alloys. Metal alloys are usually hardened through forging or peening. This fact has suggested the mechanism of reddening of the asteroids through their bombardment from external bodies, which fragment and harden the metals present on the surface. The verification of this process was carried out by bombarding meteorites and analyzing their transformed spectrum. All these results have been achieved by using meteorites bought in Morocco at a very low price and with a home-based workshop for the preparation of the material. The results, published on international journals, have captured the attention for the cost/impact of the experiment and considered innovative within the section “Cutting-edge” of Astronomy Now (February 2007, pg. 17).

P.F. Moretti, A. Maras, F. Somma, P. Aloe, 2006, “Simulation of low-velocity bombardment of asteroid surfaces: regolith formation and reddening of the spectra”, Astron. & Astroph., 459, 245