Scientists find water in the meteorite

On February 28, 2021, a fireball shot across the British night sky, leaving fragments of a meteor on a walkway near the town of Winkcombe.

Scientists at the Natural History Museum in London and the University of Glasgow rushed there and arranged for extraterrestrial space rocks to be transported to their nearest laboratory.

To his great surprise, the meteorite contained molecules of water and carbon – the essential elements for life on Earth. Their results have been published In the journal Science Advances.

Long trip

The Natural History Museum has been observing the night sky for many years. They captured the meteorite’s impact with 16 cameras, allowing scientists to quickly collect the meteor before it was contaminated by material from Earth.

By observing the meteorite’s angle and velocity via surveillance cameras, the researchers were able to calculate its trajectory. So they think that the meteorite traveled 300 million km.

For millions of years, the meteorite was part of a larger asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, which initially weighed 30 kilograms.

It is a miracle that the meteor reached Earth at all, as most of it burns up in the atmosphere.

By chance, it flew through our atmosphere at the right angle and at a speed of 13.5 k / s, which means that a piece of 500 grams fell to the ground.

water from space

The researchers examined the rock with X-rays and lasers, bombarding it with electrons, to see what elements and minerals it contained.

Much to their surprise, the meteorite turned out to be a so-called rare carbon chondrite, which means that it contains materials from the time our solar system was formed 4.6 billion years ago.

The thing that surprised scientists the most is that the stone contains 11 percent water for its weight – water, which is remarkably similar to the water found on Earth.

Hydrogen had been found in other chondrites before, but since they had been on Earth for so long, the uncertainty about whether they had been contaminated with particles from our planet was too great.

Because the researchers rushed to collect the Winchcombe meteorite, they were able to clean up the rock immediately and see what material at the impact site might have been contaminated with it.

The meteorite also contained so-called phyllosilicates, a clay material that encapsulates organic molecules of fats and fatty acids. In addition, they found traces of hydrocarbons, iron, titanium, aluminum and the noble gas neon.

But more importantly, they found carbon and nitrogen-based molecules that made up 2% of the meteorite. Among them are amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins and therefore DNA.

Along with water, these two elements have a major function in the development of life on Earth.

“formation [meteoritens] Water, which is based on hydrogen isotopes, is very similar to what you see in Earth’s oceans, while containing amino acids that are used to build DNA,” says one of the researchers behind the study, Professor Ashley King at the Natural History Museum.In a press release.

“We know it wasn’t contaminated, so this research supports theories that carbonaceous asteroids played an important role in bringing these particles to Earth after it formed.”