A meteorite that hit an English village is the most intact ever found

In February last year, a fireball streaked across the skies of south-west England, captured by a number of security cameras and local astronomical observatories. A piece of this space rock, about 500 grams, was found shortly after in a house in the village of Winchcombe, and the name was later given to the meteorite.

According to the website space.com, a very early discovery, indicates that the meteorite was rarely exposed to Earth’s elements, allowing it to retain its chemical composition intact. In fact, the composition of Winchcomb’s rock almost matches that of asteroid samples collected by direct probes in space.

The results of a preliminary analysis carried out on the meteorite were published this week in the journal Scientists are making progress, and seems to support the idea that Earth’s water comes from asteroids. This is because the Winchcomb space rock contains hydrogen atoms that have the same isotopic composition as water on our planet.

The research also revealed that the meteorite must have separated from its parent asteroid only 200,000 to 300,000 years ago – a fairly recent one (in astronomical terms). Most meteorites, according to the paper’s authors, spend millions of years in interplanetary space before their path crosses Earth. During this time, they are destroyed by cosmic rays and solar wind.

By analyzing data from cameras that captured the rock’s path through Earth’s atmosphere, astronomers were able to reconstruct its orbit and determine that its parent asteroid was in the main asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Our planet.

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The Winchcombe meteorite is a carbonaceous chondrite, a rare type of meteorite believed to have originated from very early asteroids that migrated into the main belt from the outer edges of the Solar System and changed little in chemical composition from its parent natural Winchcombe la. The meteorite offers a unique glimpse into these ancient “time capsules.”

“Along with the good kind of hydrogen, the meteorite also contains the kind of organic matter that may have given rise to life on Earth about 3.5 billion years ago,” the scientists said in a statement.

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