Madrid. A team of researchers from the Universities of Chicago, the Free University of Brussels and ETH Zurich have discovered a 7.6-kilo meteorite in Antarctica, among the hundred largest found on that continent.
Antarctica is one of the best places in the world to search for meteorites. This is so in part because it is a desert, and dry conditions limit the degree of degradation experienced by meteorites. The scenery is also ideal, as these dark space rocks stand out clearly on the icy surface. Even if they sink into the ice, the movement of the glaciers exposes them back to the surface.
An international team has returned from Antarctica with five new meteorites, including one that weighs 7.6 kilograms. Maria Valdés, a scientist at the Field Museum and the University of Chicago, estimates that of the around 45,000 meteorites recovered from Antarctica in the last century, only a hundred reach or exceed that size.
“Size doesn’t necessarily matter with meteorites, and even the smallest ones can have incredible scientific value,” says Valdés, “but finding one that big is rare and really exciting.”
The team explored the mapped meteorite sites using satellite imagery. The five meteorites will be analyzed by the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, and sediments potentially containing micrometeorites will be distributed among the team members’ scientific bodies.
Valdés points out that studying meteorites helps us to better understand our place in the universe. “The larger the sample size of meteorites, the better we can understand our solar system and ourselves,” she said, quoted by Eureka Alert.
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