A meteorite found in the UK contains an extremely rare combination of minerals that could give scientists a look at how the solar system formed and even how life on Earth appeared.
The meteorite fell to Earth on February 28, when a blinding fireball approached the south-west of England, Live Science previously reported. At the time, scientists suspected that quite a few fragments of the space rock had probably reached the ground.
One such fragment landed on an alley in Winchcombe, a town in Gloucestershire, according to a statement from the Natural History Museum in London.
Observing a black spot of soot on their alley, the occupants of the house wrapped pieces of meteorite and quickly alerted the British Meteor Observatory, which then contacted the Natural History Museum.
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“For someone who had no idea what it really was, the finder did a fantastic job of collecting it,” said Ashley King, a museum researcher who studies meteorites.
“He wrapped most of it very quickly on Monday morning, maybe less than 12 hours after the actual event. Then he continued to find bits in his garden for the next few days.”
It is important to collect meteorites that fall shortly after they hit the ground, as they can quickly become contaminated by rain or exposure to the atmosphere, Live Science reported. In total, the collected fragments weigh almost 11 ounces (300 grams) and represent the first bits of fallen space rocks recovered in the UK since 1991, according to the museum’s statement.
Examining the rock fragments, the museum’s researchers identified the meteorite as a carbonic chondrite, a rare type of meteorite that comes from an ancient asteroid forged in the early days of the solar system when the first planets formed.
“Such meteorites are relics of the early solar system, which means they can tell us what the planets are made of,” said Sara Russell, a museum researcher studying chondritic carbonic meteorites.
“But also … we think meteorites like this could have brought water to Earth, giving the planet its oceans.”
New images of #fireball this evening. Submitted by Katie Parr pic.twitter.com/J4jmsM9tFj
– United Kingdom Meteor Network (@UKMeteorNetwork) February 28, 2021
The meteorite itself looks a bit like coal, but it is much softer and more fragile, King said in a statement. The texture suggests that the space rock contains soft clay minerals and therefore once contained ice water. In general, carbonic chondrite meteorites usually contain a mixture of minerals and organic compounds, including amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.
“It’s almost amazingly amazing, because we’re working on the Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx space missions for the asteroid-sample, and this material looks exactly like the material it’s collecting,” Russell said in a statement.
Both spacecraft were designed to intercept and collect asteroid evidence; Hayabusa2 returned to Earth in 2020, carrying 0.16 ounces (4.5 grams) of space rock, and OSIRIS-REx is scheduled to deliver about 2.1 ounces (60 grams) of samples in 2023, according to the statement.
But thanks to the Winchcombe meteorite, museum researchers now have more than 280 grams of carbonic chondrite to study. The minerals probably survived their fall to Earth because they descended relatively slowly, hitting the earth at 46,800 km / h, the researchers said.
While this may sound quick, meteorites can reach speeds of up to 254,000 km / h as they pass through the atmosphere – a rate that would cause carbonic chondrite to disintegrate before it hits the earth, King said in a statement.
As for the Winchcombe meteorite, “the fact that it was going pretty slowly and then being collected so quickly after landing, avoiding any precipitation that could change its clean composition, means I was just lucky with everything,” she said. .
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This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.