FHi now has discovered that a meteorite that fell in Gloucestershire, England, in February contained the first extraterrestrial water found in meteorites that fell in the UK.
According to Ashley King, a researcher in the Planetary Materials Group at the Natural History Museum, about 12% of the sample is made up of water and offers clues to the origins of water on Earth. Because a lot of knowledge is contaminated with very little to be collected.
Looking at the new discovery, he clarified that since the meteorite weighing about half a kilogram was recovered quickly, in about 12 hours, it was not contaminated by water and materials on Earth. “Aqueous meteorites and other extraterrestrial materials” for the composition of water on Earth.
“The composition of this water is very similar to the composition of water in Earth’s oceans,” King explained, “which is excellent evidence that asteroids have made a very important contribution to Earth’s oceans.”
“Where water came from on Earth is one of the big questions we have in planetary science,” King reiterated, adding that “one of the obvious places might be through ice sheets or comets with loads and loads of asteroids.” Sky News.
The meteorite – the first known carbonaceous chondrites to be found in the UK and the first recovered nationwide in 30 years – is thought to have formed around 4.6 billion years ago and taken around 300,000 years to reach Earth.
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