L'Aigle (meteorite)

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Fragment of the meteorite from L'Aigle in the Natural History Museum Vienna

L'Aigle is a meteorite that fell on April 26, 1803 in L'Aigle , France as a rain of stones, i.e. in fragments. It is classified as an L6 chondrite . Its mass, determined from the sum of the masses of the 2,000 to 3,000 individual items seized, was at least 37 kg.

L'Aigle plays an important role in the history of meteorite research. Jean-Baptiste Biot of the Académie Française wrote a report on the case; the stone was also examined by the chemist Edward Charles Howard and the researchers Louis Jacques Thénard and Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin . Until then, the theory of the extraterrestrial origin of meteorites had been rejected by most scientists, especially by the Académie Française. Only with a scientific treatise on fireballs and meteors published by Ernst FF Chladni in 1794 did the thesis of an extraterrestrial origin of the meteorites gradually gain acceptance. The stone rain from L'Aigle contributed significantly to the fact that meteorites were finally recognized as extraterrestrial objects.

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