At the end of last month, a spectacular show fireball it illuminated the night sky over the United Kingdom and northern Europe. Now, locals are beginning to recover fragments of leftover meteorites, and scientists say they may contain the “blocks of life.”
An extremely rare meteorite, found on an unpretentious roadway of a house in Gloucestershire, marks the first piece of space rock discovered in the UK in 30 years, the Museum of Natural History in London reported on Tuesday. It will offer researchers a look at the appearance of the solar system when it was formed, about 4.6 billion years ago.
He has been christened the Winchcombe meteorite by the city where he landed.
The rare finding is the result of a fireball detected on 28 February, around 10pm, in the western part of the UK. The bright flash lasted about six seconds, the museum said.
The museum analyzes fragments of the meteorite, which weighs only 10.6 ounces. The special type of meteorite is known as carbonaceous chondrite.
“This is really exciting,” museum researcher Sara Russell said in a statement. “There are about 65,000 known meteorites worldwide, and of those only 51 of them are carbonaceous chondrites that have been seen to fall like this.”
UK Fireball Alliance
Researchers say the relatively slow meteorite speed of about 8 kilometers per second may be a thank you for the rock’s survival.
“‘It’s almost amazing, because we’re working on space missions to return asteroid samples Hayabusa2 i OSIRIS-REx, and that stuff looks exactly like the stuff they’re collecting, “Russell said.” I’m gasping for excitement. ”
The man who found the meteorite had missed the entrance to the fireball and was surprised to wake up with a “black soot splash mark” at its entrance. Researchers describe it as a coal-like appearance, but one that feels much softer and more fragile.
The sample is in such good condition, essentially comparable to rock samples of space missions.
“For someone who really had no idea what it really was, the finder did a fantastic job collecting it,” Dr. Ashley King, a museum researcher, said in a statement. “On Monday morning he wrapped up most of it very quickly, maybe less than 12 hours after the actual event. Then he continued to find bits and pieces in his garden for the next few days.”
The museum said the rock probably contained soft clay minerals, suggesting it once contained frozen water ice. Carbonaceous chondrites are composed of a combination of minerals and organic compounds, including the basic components of life: amino acids.
This type of meteorite comes from an asteroid that formed millions of years ago, when the planets in our solar system formed. Scientists believe they have valuable information about our first solar system.
The patrons of the Museum of Natural History
“Meteorites like this are relics of the first solar system, which means they can tell us what the planets are made of,” Russell said. “But we also believe that meteorites like this may have brought water to Earth, providing the planet with its oceans.”
A record number of people detected and reported the fireball, and there were a lot of doorbell camera videos, control camera videos and social media moments to help scientists determine where the meteorite came.
The UK Fireball Alliance determined that the extraterrestrial rock had expanded to Earth from the outer regions of the United States. asteroid belt – located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
So much space rock has been recovered, that researchers can use the samples as a kind of test for the types of experiments they hope to perform with meteorites returned from recent space missions.
“There are so many things that have gone well,” Russell said. “I was a PhD student when the last meteorite in the UK fell and I’ve been waiting ever since. I’ve always dreamed of a carbonate chondrite, but I really don’t expect that to happen. It’s absolutely a dream. come true. ”