London – “The Gulf”
Researchers from the Natural History Museum in Great Britain first found extraterrestrial water in a meteorite that fell in the UK.
The Winchcombe meteorite, which fell in Gloucestershire in February last year, is believed to contain clues to the source of Earth’s vast oceans.
Ashley King, a researcher with the Natural History Museum’s Planetary Materials Collection, said 12 percent of the meteorite sample was water.
He added: “The composition of water in the meteorite is very similar to the composition of water in Earth’s oceans, which is evidence that asteroids and meteorites such as” Winckcombe “have made a very important contribution to Earth’s oceans.”
King pointed out that “Winckcombe” is the only meteorite that falls on Earth and contains water, noting that it has not been contaminated with water and materials on Earth.
He added: “We are trying to match the composition of water meteorites and other materials found outside the Earth with the composition of water on Earth.” While most of the meteorites we find are contaminated.
“One of the big questions we have in planetary science is where does water come from on Earth,” the museum researchers said. And one of the most obvious places is either through comets that have a lot of ice in them, or through asteroids, and there’s always a debate, were asteroids the main source?
He explained that the composition of water in “Winckcombe” is probably the main water source of the solar system inside the Earth, and we have data indicating that some asteroids match well with the Earth, and “Winckcombe” confirms the same story. .
Speaking at De Montfort University, which hosts the festival, Dr. King said the analysis showed the meteorite came from an asteroid somewhere close to Jupiter. It was formed 4.6 billion years ago and its journey to Earth took 300,000 years.
There are approximately 65,000 known meteorites on Earth.
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