A meteorite found in the United Kingdom contains an extremely rare combination of minerals that can give scientists a glimpse into how the solar system formed and even how life on earth originated.
The meteorite tumbled to Earth on 28 February, when a dazzling fireball zoomed out over the south-west of England, Live Science reported earlier. At the time, scientists suspected that many fragments of the space rock were likely to reach the ground. One such fragment ends up on a driveway in Winchcombe, a town in Gloucestershire, according to a statement of the Natural History Museum in London.
When the occupants of the house saw a black, sooty stain on their driveway, they packed up the pieces of the meteorite and quickly alerted the British Meteorite Observation Network, which subsequently contacted the Natural History Museum.
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“For someone who did not really have an idea of what it actually was, he did a fantastic job of collecting it,” Ashley King, a researcher in the museum studying meteorites, said in the statement. “He quickly packed most of it Monday morning, maybe less than twelve hours after the actual event. He continued to find pieces in his yard for the next few days.”
It is important to collect fallen meteorites shortly after they fall to the ground, as they can be quickly polluted by rain or exposure to the atmosphere, Live Science reported. In total, the fragments collected weigh almost 11 grams (300 grams) and represent the first pieces of fallen rock recovered in the UK since 1991, according to the museum statement.
After examining the rocky fragments, museum researchers identified the meteorite as a carbonaceous chondrite, a rare type of meteorite derived from an ancient asteroid that was found in the early days of the solar system when the first planets formed.
“Meteorites like these are remnants of the early solar system, which means they can tell us what the planets are made of,” Sara Russell, a researcher at the museum studying carbonaceous chondrite meteorites, said in the statement. ‘But we also think that meteorites like this may have brought water to the land Earthwhich supplies the planet with its oceans. ‘
The meteorite itself looks a bit like coal, but is much softer and more brittle, King said in the statement. The texture indicates that the space rock contained soft clay minerals and thus once contained water ice. Generally, carbonaceous chondrite meteorites contain a mixture of minerals and organic compounds, including amino acid, the building blocks of proteins.
“This is almost surprisingly surprising because we are working on the asteroid monster return space shipments Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx, and this material looks exactly like the material they collect,” Russell said in the statement. Both of these spacecraft are designed to intercept and collect samples of asteroids; Hayabusa2 back to earth in 2020with 4.5 grams of space rock, and OSIRIS-REx is scheduled to deliver about 20 grams of samples in 2023 according to the statement.
But thanks to the Winchcombe meteorite, museum researchers now have more than 280 grams of carbonaceous chondrite to study. The minerals probably survived their fall on the earth because they descended relatively slowly and hit 46,800 km / h on the ground.
Although it may sound fast, meteorites can reach speeds of up to 254,000 km / h as they traverse the atmosphere – a rate that will cause carbonaceous chondrite to crumble before it ever falls to the ground, King said in the statement.
As for the Winchcombe meteorite, ‘the fact that it was fairly slow, and that it was collected so quickly after it landed, and would not avoid any rainfall that could change the pristine composition, means that we were just really lucky with everything, “she said.
Originally published on Live Science.