However, the white landscape once again proved to be a stunning place to hunt for meteorites.
An international team of scientists have discovered five new space rocks from Antarctica, and one of them is nearly 8kg (17 pounds). What’s amazing about this find is that finding a meteorite of this size is rare.
According to EurekAlert of the nearly 45,000 meteorites found here, only a hundred or so were the size of this recently discovered meteorite or larger.
Maria Valdes, a research scientist at the Field Museum and University of Chicago, who was part of the expedition, said, “Size doesn’t always matter when it comes to meteorites, and even small micrometeorites can be of great scientific value.”
“But of course, finding a large meteorite like this is rare, and very exciting,” he added.
The four researchers part of the mission were Valdes, Vinciane Debaille from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, who led the expedition; Maria Schönbächler from ETH-Zurich and Ryoga Maeda from Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
The team is the first to explore the potential of new meteorite sites that are mapped using satellite imagery.
Meteorite those discovered by the team will now be analyzed by the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Science. In addition, the four researchers will also study meteorite sediments that have the potential to contain small micrometeorites by researchers at their respective universities.
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Valdes said he was eager to see what meteorite analysis revealed, because “Studying meteorites helps us better understand our place in the universe,” adding that he was eager to find out what meteorites revealed.
“The larger the sample size we have from meteorites, the better we can understand our Solar System, and the better we can understand ourselves,” he added.
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