A piece of black rock dating back to the early days of the solar system has fallen on a residential entrance to the UK.
Late last month, a rock weighing about 300 grams collapsed on a road of Rob and Cathryn Wilcock, who live in the small town of Winchcombe. UK.
“When I heard him fall, I got up and looked out the window to see what was there. But because it was dark I couldn’t see anything, “Hannah, the couple’s daughter, he said the BBC. “It was the next morning when we left that we saw him in the unit, a bit like a kind of splash. And in all honesty, my original thought was: was anyone driving through the Cotswolds throwing lumps of coal into people’s gardens? ”
A lump of coal, it is not. Rather it is a meteorite. And not just any type of meteorite: it is a piece of carbonaceous chondrite that, with an estimated age of 4.5 billion years, dates back to the formation of the solar system, according to a statement of the University of Manchester.
“Almost all meteorites come to us from asteroids, the leftover blocks of the solar system that can tell us how planets like Earth formed,” said Ashley King, researcher and innovator for the UK Future Leaders Fellow in the Department of Earth Sciences in Natural History Museum, he said to the statement. “The opportunity to be one of the first people to see and study a meteorite that recovered almost immediately after it fell is a dream come true.”
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The rare sample came in a fire of glory, as the rock illuminated the sky over the UK and northern Europe in February. 28, 2021. The fireball, which entered the Earth’s atmosphere at speeds reaching 14 km per second), was seen by thousands of witnesses, many of whom denounced the show at the UK meteorite observation network.
A wide range of camera footage captured from the event from different angles allowed scientists to triangulate a landing point and also recreate their flight path through the solar system, according to the University of Manchester Declaration. Other remnants of the shattered asteroid are believed to have fallen inside the region known as the Cotswold, and continues the search for these valuable pieces.
Along with the main piece, there are other smaller fragments of the meteorite blow the road. Despite being a dusty, shattered mess, the pieces they are in excellent condition and are compared to returned virgin samples from space missions.
“I was shocked when I saw it and I knew immediately that it was a rare meteorite and a totally unique event,” Open University researcher Richard Greenwood said in the statement. “It’s exciting to be the first to confirm to the people in front of you that the blow they heard overnight on their driveway is really what’s real.”
Carbonaceous chondrites are formed from a combination of minerals and organic compounds, such as amino acids. By studying such ancient objects, scientists can look at the early days of the solar system, allowing them to better understand the origin of the planets and water, and how the basic blocks of life came to Earth.
“We are absolutely delighted that something has happened that is so valuable to science, to human understanding of the world and the solar system, and that we can be a small part of it,” Rob Wilcock told the BBC.
The meteorite will be moved to the Museum of Natural History, allowing a formal investigation of the object.
Of the tens of thousands of meteorites known on Earth, only 51 are carbonaceous chondrites. The February 28 meteorite is the first carbonaceous chondrite to be found in the United Kingdom. and the first meteorite sample recovered in the county since 1991.