We spoke to Laura Henderson Lewis, one of the professors on the Northeastern team, and she told us the material found in the meteorites is a combination of two base metals, nickel and iron, which were cooled over millions of years as meteors tumbled through space.
That just can't be right. Why would a meteor take millions of years to cool? White dwarf or even a planet, sure, but a meteor?
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That just can't be right. Why would a meteor take millions of years to cool? White dwarf or even a planet, sure, but a meteor?
That was the previous idea, but this work changes that. It implies that the cooling rates of meteors is actually much faster than previously guessed.
other than friction or the sun adding heat, why would they assume that it would take so long for it to cool down?
I assume it's because there's only so much of that heat that the globs could radiate into space as (infrared) light.
Maybe someone familiar with the intimate details of blackbody radiation could chime in here?