Large meteorite unearthed in Antarctica after thousands of years and it could unlock secrets of the universe
Antartica’s heaviest meteorite has been found among a cluster of five that are suspected to have been wedged in a glacier for thousands of years.
The largest of the haul has weighed in at nearly 17 pounds and given scientists new insight into Earth’s history.
Right by the Princess Elisabeth Antartica station, located on the nearly-barren southern polar continent, is where the cluster of meteorites was hiding from researchers.
In the world of metoerities, bigger is not necessarily better, according to Maria Valdes.
She is one of the scientists on the expedition, and also works as a meteoriticist at the Field Museum in Chicago, Live Science said.
“Size doesn’t necessarily matter when it comes to meteorites, and even tiny micrometeorites can be incredibly scientifically valuable,” she said in a statement.
“But of course, finding a big meteorite like this one is rare, and really exciting.”
They may have been found by the researcher team in the first part of January, but these meteorites fell thousands of years ago.
Thanks to the churn of the glaciers, the buried space objects were brought back to the top.
Because they were protected from weathering due to their deep undergound position, so they are in the meteorite version of mint condition.
Long ago, these meteorites fell a long way from home, Ryoga Maeda of the expedition explained.
“The objects come from the asteroid belt,” which sits between Mars’ and Jupiter’s orbits, “and probably plopped down into the Antarctic blue ice several tens of thousands of years ago,” Maeda, a Belgian-based, Free University of Brussels doctoral student told The Brussels Times.
Finding these celestial gems is normally a laborious process, but a study from January 26, 2022 utilized satellite and AI to find the best spots to look for meteorites, research which changed the trajectory of its successors, Live Science reported.
Still, Free University of Brussels geochemist Vinciane Debaille maintained in a statement that “the reality on the ground is much more difficult than the beauty of satellite images,” the outlet said.
A massive area was combed, but researchers were fooled numerous times by “meteor-wrongs,” per CNN.
After their discovery, the meteorites were taken with care to Brussel’s Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences for further testing.
Each scientist on the project also collected their samples for research as well.
This was the first research team to use the 2022 satellite results to search for frozen meteorites.
It was estimated that up to 300,000 meteorites could still be dwelling in the ice, according to the research.
Only about 15% have been recovered thus far.
The more meteorites found, the more we can potentially learn about objects comfortably close to us in space.