Kabar6-An international research team discovered five new meteorites, during a trip to the Antarctic ice plains. The rare meteorite is about the size of a melon and weighs about 7.7 kg.
The specimen is one of about 100 rocks this size, or larger, found in Antarctica, a prime spot for meteorite hunting, where more than 45,000 space rocks have been tracked.
Currently, launching Globalnews, the extraordinary discovery is in the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels, and will be studied. Maria Valdes, a research scientist at the Field Museum of Natural History Chicago and the University of Chicago, who was part of the expedition team, has saved some of the material for her own analysis.
Valdes’ area of focus is cosmochemistry. “Broadly means that we use meteorites to study the origin and evolution of the solar system through chemical methods,” said Valdes.
He would take a sample and use a strong acid to dissolve it, before using a process called calibrated chemistry to isolate the various elements that make up the rock.
“Then I can start to think about where this rock came from, how it evolved over time, from what kind of parent body it was, and where in the solar system did that parent body form,” Valdes explained. “Those are the kind of big questions we’re trying to address.”
According to Valdes’ records, meteorites hit Earth evenly over its entire surface, so Antarctica is not home to very large concentrations of meteorites. But the pristine white ice is the ideal backdrop from which to view the jet black rocks.
Valdes said distinguishing meteorites from other rocks can be a tricky process. Another distinguishing characteristic of meteorites is the weight of the potential specimen. Meteorites would be much heavier for their size than typical Earth rocks because they are packed with dense metals.
Regarding future research, Valdes added, the five meteorites that he and his colleagues found on this expedition were just a small part.(ilj/bbs)
