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The space rock crashed into a lake in Michigan in 2018, and a research team has managed to discover what was inside, according to the science portal Live Science. The results may also shed light on the origins of life on earth.
The fireball was detected on January 16, 2018 in Canada and various parts of the United States. The object’s movement was also followed by weather monitoring radars, so we were able to pinpoint the location of the landing.
In the walnut-only meteorite, the researchers identified 2,600 organic molecules.
These come from the early age of the Solar System, they can be almost 4,500 million years. Experts suspect that meteorites may have transported such organic matter to the young Earth, creating the foundation necessary for life to form.
Because the meteorite was removed very quickly from the lake, no water leaked through its crevices and therefore was not contaminated with terrestrial materials. In fact, it is as if it was brought directly from outer space to our planet.
It has been unchanged for three billion years.
According to the researchers, the meteorite’s maternal asteroid was formed 4.5 billion years ago, at the time of the birth of the Solar System. It then underwent a process called thermal metamorphosis, during which the asteroid was exposed to a temperature of 700 degrees Celsius. However, for the next 3 billion years, the asteroid’s material composition remained unchanged.
A chunk of rock that crashed into our planet broke off the asteroid about 12 million years ago when it collided with another object.
H4 category meteorites that have suffered a high iron content and have undergone thermal metamorphosis are very rare, and only 4 percent of the objects that reach Earth belong to this type.
These meteorites may have brought life to Earth
At an early age, the Earth bombarded the surface with many more meteorites than today. Most asteroids contain organic matter, even those that undergo thermal metamorphosis. According to some theories, the first microorganisms on our planet were formed through organic molecules of meteorites, which later evolved into the complex living beings that we know today.
The results of the study were published in the scientific journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science.
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