Winchcombe meteorite is first UK find in 30 years
Several rocky fragments have been recovered from the fireball that lit up the sky above southern England just over a week ago. They came down in the Winchcombe area of Gloucestershire.
A householder first alerted experts after noticing a pile of charred stone on his driveway. Other members of the public have since come forward with their own finds.
It’s 30 years since meteorite material was last retrieved in the UK. Researchers are particularly thrilled because of the rarity of the rock type.
It’s carbonaceous chondrite - a stony material that retains unaltered chemistry from the formation of our Solar System 4.6 billion years ago.
Dr Ashley King from London’s Natural History Museum (NHM) said nothing like it had ever been recorded in the UK before.
“Carbonaceous chondrites are particularly special because they are essentially the left-over building blocks of our Solar System. Many contain simple organics and amino acids; some of them contain minerals formed by water - so, all the ingredients are there for understanding how you make a habitable planet such as the Earth,” he told BBC News.
All told, there must be 300-400g of material, most of it now lodged with the NHM. The pieces are small - marble-sized.
It’s hard to overstate just how significant this is for British meteoritic science. Of the approximately 65,000 meteorites in collections worldwide, only 1,206 had eyewitnesses to their fall, and of these only 51 are of the carbonaceous chondrite type.
Because this fireball was tracked via camera on entry to Earth’s atmosphere, its orbit has been worked out. The object came from the outer asteroid belt, out towards Jupiter.
Fascinating … :shock:
