Antarctica is a punishingly cold, barren, and wild environment to operate in. On the other hand, the white terrain has once again proven to be an excellent location for meteorite searching. An international team of scientists has collected five new “space rocks” from Antarctica, one of which weighs nearly 8kg (17 pounds).
What’s fascinating about this discovery is that locating a huge meteorite like this is extremely rare. According to EurekAlert, only a hundred or so of the about 45,000 meteorites detected here are the size of this recently discovered meteorite or larger.
“Size doesn’t necessarily matter when it comes to meteorites, and even tiny micrometeorites can be incredibly scientifically valuable,” says Maria Valdes, a research scientist at the Field Museum and the University of Chicago who was part of this expedition.
“But of course, finding a big meteorite like this one is rare, and really exciting,” she adds.
Valdes, Vinciane Debaille of the Université Libre de Bruxelles, who led the trip; Maria Schönbächler of ETH-Zurich; and Ryoga Maeda of Vrije Universiteit Brussel were all part of this project.
The team was the first to investigate potential new meteorite sites using satellite images.
The Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences will now examine the meteorites retrieved by the crew. The four experts will also investigate the meteorite’s silt, which may include small micrometeorites, by researchers at several universities.
Valdes says she’s excited to see what the meteorite analyses reveal because “studying meteorites helps us better understand our place in the universe,” and she’s excited to see what the meteorites reveal.
“The bigger a sample size we have of meteorites, the better we can understand our Solar System, and the better we can understand ourselves,” she added.