Matthias M. M. Meier
@mmmmeier.bsky.social
3K followers 1.1K following 1.4K posts
Meteorites, Museums, Mars, Mountains and many more things. Meteoriticist, Noble Gaser, Space Nerd, Family Man. Director of the Natural History Museum of St. Gallen, Switzerland. Private account (en/de). 🇨🇭🇸🇪🇲🇫🇪🇺🇺🇦 orcid.org/0000-0002-7179-4173
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Reposted by Matthias M. M. Meier
weareagc.bsky.social
New paper alert!

Tartèse et al. just published their new work in AGC:

"Petrogenesis of Néma 001, an alkali-rich meteorite from the acapulcoite-lodranite parent body"

Full free article available here: doi.org/10.33063/agc...

The cosmochemistry is well represented this week, thanks for your trust!
Reposted by Matthias M. M. Meier
teddykareta.bsky.social
happy to have helped some with "Catastrophic disruption of asteroid 2023 CX1 and implications for planetary defence" by Auriane Egal et al., out today in Nature Astronomy (and here on ArXiV: arxiv.org/abs/2509.12362)
Reposted by Matthias M. M. Meier
science.esa.int
First images of comet #3I/ATLAS from Europe's Mars orbiters 😍

Observing the comet from 30 million km away, #ExoMars reveals the halo of gas and dust surrounding the comet's nucleus.

Read more 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl...
🔭🧪
mmmmeier.bsky.social
It's also something that scores very high up if you ask people on the street what their space agency should prioritize. You know, like, way above sending people to the Moon and Mars.
Reposted by Matthias M. M. Meier
kojamf.bsky.social
Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.
mmmmeier.bsky.social
What would be the complication?
mmmmeier.bsky.social
To give an example: if you have a 10 cm diameter pebble and grind it up into 100 um grains, how much will you increase the total surface area? By a factor of 1 million! So your little pile of dust will be able to bind 1 million times more CO2 than the pebble.
mmmmeier.bsky.social
I guess the key to why this might work (at least on paper) is because what is actually weathering here is rock surfaces, not interiors. Cracking rocks up into dust can massively increase the surface available to weathering.
mmmmeier.bsky.social
Ok, sure. What I meant was, if CometInvestigator had been ready when these two were discovered,would it have been able to go for a useful intercept?
mmmmeier.bsky.social
What about 1I/'Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov?
Reposted by Matthias M. M. Meier
mmmmeier.bsky.social
At least, the intern can learn and improve...
mmmmeier.bsky.social
At least, aspire to be the best version of yourself when it really matters.
picardtips.bsky.social
Picard management tip: Don't just be yourself. Be the best version of yourself. Recall who you were on your best day. Be that person again.
mmmmeier.bsky.social
I always found these claims of ice age megafauna extinction due to climatic factors highly dubious. Come on, during 2.8 million years of ice ages, they do fine, but then, in the one glacial (and following interglacial) when modern humans spread around the world, they all suddenly disapear?!
Early humans dined on giant sloths and other Ice Age giants, archaeologists find
What did early humans like to eat? The answer, according to a team of archaeologists in Argentina, is extinct megafauna, such as giant sloths and giant armadillos. In a study published in the journal ...
phys.org
mmmmeier.bsky.social
Duh. 😥 A perfect little meteorite delivery event, fumbled on the last few hundred kilometers.
mmmmeier.bsky.social
That is a great plan! 🪨 🛰️ 🛰️ 🌍
Reposted by Matthias M. M. Meier
science.esa.int
🆕 The discovery of new complex organic molecules at Saturn's #Enceladus enhances the likelihood that the moon is habitable 🪐

On Earth, these molecules are involved in chemical reaction chains that lead to the more complex molecules essential for life.

Read more 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl...
🔭 🧪 ☄️
Scientific illustration showing a cross-section of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. It features three labelled layers: An ice shell at the top, with visible cracks releasing jets of water vapour into space; an ocean in the middle, depicted as a large body of water beneath the ice; a rocky core at the bottom, shown emitting heat that may drive the jets. In the background, Saturn and its rings are visible in space.
Reposted by Matthias M. M. Meier
vicgrinberg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
When an interstellar object passes close by, all eyes are on it!

#esa is making its solar system mission look at the #comet 3I/ATLAS: first #exomars TGO and #marsexpress when the comet passes close to Mars and then the #juice, currently on its way to […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]
Infographic showing the path of comet 3I/ATLAS, the third known interstellar object to enter our Solar System. It displays the orbits of Earth, Mars and the Juice spacecraft around the Sun, along with key dates and events as comet 3I/ATLAS travels through the inner Solar System in 2025. Coloured and numbered dots mark important observation points by telescopes and spacecraft.
Reposted by Matthias M. M. Meier
coreyspowell.bsky.social
Meteorites striking the Moon release enough energy that we can see the flashes from Earth. The NELIOTA project has witnessed 193 of them (mapped here), creating a novel catalog of impact threats.

A new upgrade means we'll soon see a lot more. 🧪🔭

www.esa.int/Space_Safety...
This map reveals locations of lunar impact flashes detected by the NELIOTA project since 2017.
mmmmeier.bsky.social
👀Ghosh et al., submitted: Giant Impact ejecta can drive significant atmospheric erosion on terrestrial planets. So far, "Giant impact erosion" of atmospheres has always been considered as part of the actual impact (and/or later magma ocean heating), not re-accretion of debris. Interesting!
Re-accretion of Giant Impact Ejecta Can Drive Significant Atmospheric Erosion on Terrestrial Planets
Giant impacts, the collisions between planetary embryos, play a crucial role in sculpting the planets and their orbital architectures. Numerical simulations have advanced our understanding of these ev...
arxiv.org
Reposted by Matthias M. M. Meier
andrasgaspar.bsky.social
Our paper on the JWST/MIRI observations of the epsilon Eridani system, led by Dr. Schuyler Wolff, were published today! This is the last of the Archetypical Disks in our MIRI Survey, after Fomalhaut and Vega. Just like for those disks, our MIRI images reveal an extended inner asteroid disk!
Four color image of the eps Eri debris disk.
mmmmeier.bsky.social
The clock is ticking... Somewhere between the return of martian samples and a successful crewed lunar landing, historians will one day place the moment when China took the global lead in space exploration.
andrewjonesspace.bsky.social
Tianwen-3 Mars sample return. Launch in late 2028.
Reposted by Matthias M. M. Meier
rki.de
🍷 Auch wenig Alkohol kann riskant sein!

📊 79 % der Erwachsenen in Deutschland trinken Alkohol. Wie viele gefährden damit ihre Gesundheit und wie unterscheiden sich Altersgruppen und Geschlechter?

Mehr im #JHealthMonit:
➡️ www.rki.de/jhealthmonit
Bildbeschreibung: Weinflasche liegt auf rotem und rosa Untergrund. Oben links Logo Journal of Health Monitoring.
Text: Alkohol ohne Risiko? Gibt es nicht! Neue wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse zeigen: Schon geringe Mengen können der Gesundheit schaden. Bildbeschreibung: Blaue Fläche mit Text und Glühbirnen-Icon.
Text: Hintergrund der Neubewertung. Alkoholkonsum ist in Deutschland weit verbreitet und zählt zu den wichtigsten vermeidbaren Risikofaktoren für chronische Krankheiten wie Herz-Kreislauf-Erkrankungen, Leberkrankheiten und bestimmte Krebsarten. Basierend auf wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen zum Thema Alkoholkonsum wurden Risikostufen je nach Trinkmenge definiert. Wichtigste Botschaft ist, keine oder möglichst wenige alkoholische Getränke zu konsumieren. Bisherige Grenzwerte für einen risikoarmen Konsum sind damit überholt. Deshalb haben wir die Daten unserer Studie GEDA 2019/2020-EHIS mit mehr als 22.000 erwachsenen Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmern neu ausgewertet. Bildbeschreibung: Tabelle mit Gläsern und Beispielgetränken Bier, Wein, Schnaps.
Text: Neue Risikokategorien. Getränkeanzahl pro Woche und Risikostufe. Kein Alkohol: risikofrei. Bis zu 2 Getränke: geringes Risiko. 3 bis 6 Getränke: moderates Risiko. 7 oder mehr Getränke: hohes Risiko. 1 Standardgetränk entspricht dabei: 1 Flasche Bier 5 Prozent Volumen 330 Milliliter oder 1 Glas Wein 12 Prozent Volumen 125 Milliliter oder 1 Glas Schnaps 38 Prozent Volumen 40 Milliliter. Bildbeschreibung: Rosa Fläche mit liegender Weinflasche und Textfeldern.
Text: Zentrale Ergebnisse. Die Auswertung der GEDA-Studie zeigt, wie verbreitet Alkoholkonsum in Deutschland ist: 33 Prozent der Erwachsenen haben ein moderates oder hohes Krankheitsrisiko durch Alkoholkonsum. Fast 8 von 10 Erwachsenen trinken Alkohol. Nur 21 Prozent der Erwachsenen trinken keinen Alkohol. Dieses Verhalten ist mit 44 Prozent bei Männern deutlich häufiger als bei Frauen mit 21 Prozent zu verzeichnen. Außerdem ist dies häufiger bei Männern ab 45 Jahren und bei Frauen zwischen 45 und 64 Jahren zu sehen