Caption: 
Exterior of a meteorite produced when a small asteroid broke up in the atmosphere near Novato, California on October 17, 2012. It shows extensive dark impact melt that is 4.472 billion ±31 million years old (Yin et al. 2014). This age is similar to the ~4.47 billion year old age of the Moon predicted by the model. The Novato meteorite is classified as an ordinary chondrite (type L6). It came from a different asteroid than the Chelyabinsk bolide, but both experienced major impacts at roughly the same time as the Moon-forming giant impact. We argue these impact melts were created when high velocity debris from the Moon-forming impact event hit the parent asteroids of the Chelabinsk and Novato bolides and heated near-surface material.

Credit: 
Image Courtesy of Peter Jenniskens, SETI Institute