The rare meteorite fragment found in Central England. AFTERNOON PRAYER
A sample is the first to fall and was recovered in the UK in 30 years
Scientists have identified the remains of a rare meteorite that fell on a family driveway in Winchcombe, United Kingdom.
The space rock surprised viewers as it exploded across UK skies in late February, when a series of special meteorite cameras shortened the crash site to somewhere in the Cotswolds area of Central England. .
Meteorite hunters were immediately focused in the investigation, fully aware that the discovery was unbelievable as it is three decades since a meteorite collapsed in the UK. But, as luck would have it, part of the mass made a fire of shock when it fell next to the home of Rob and Hannah Wilcock and their daughter Cathryn.
“It was only the next morning when we went out that we saw him on the way; a little bit like a kind of splatter,” Hannah Wilcock told the BBC. “And, with all honesty, my original opinion was, has anyone been driving around the Cotswolds lobbying lumps of coal into people’s gardens?”
The family released photos of the small mast of black debris and dust after scientists made appeals in the media.
Experts went to the site and found 300 grams of the meteorite, which is now proven to be one of only 51 so-called known carbonaceous chondrite meteorites ever entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
“I was shocked to see it and I immediately knew it was a rare meteorite and a completely special event,” said Richard Greenwood, a meteorite expert from the Open University who first identified the sample. be the first to prove to those standing in front of you that what they heard on their driveway overnight was the real thing. “
Ben Stanley, a meteorite camera operator, captured the moment the space rock sank across England. AFTERNOON PRAYER
The rock forms a molecular time capsule that began just under 4.6 billion years ago, which was around the same time as the birth of the solar system, and which gives scientists an unchanged view of the chemistry of our cosmic neighborhood when it was created.
Carbonaceous chondrites also carry carbon-based organic fertilizers, including amino acids, which are the building blocks in life, giving scientists an idea of how biological processes can have begun on Earth first.
“This is a very exciting scientific event, as this is the first time in 30 years that a meteorite sample has fallen and been recovered in the UK,” said Katherine Joy, a meteorite expert from the University of Manchester. ” Normally, we have to send a spaceship to collect pieces of another world, but this time one has fallen into our lap. We look forward to using our labs in Manchester and working with our colleagues to explore how the newly recovered UK meteorite fall. looks at how early planets in the solar system were created. “
There are about 65,000 known meteorites on Earth. Only 1,206 have been seen falling, of which only 51 are carbonaceous chondrites, according to experts from Manchester.
It is the first known carbonaceous chondrite to be found in the UK, and the first meteorite discovered in the UK since 1991 when a 767-gram space rock landed in a human garden in the small town of Glatton, Cambridgeshire.