A daring team of scientists has endured the inhospitable conditions of Antarctica’s icy desert to recover five new meteorites, including a nearly 17-pound monster space rock.
The team of scientists included Maria Valdes, a researcher at the Field Museum and the University of Chicago, who estimated that 45,000 Meteorite Recovered to date from the icy wastelands of Antarctica, only 100 or so are as large as the largest member of this new haul, which weighs 16.7 pounds (7.6 kg).
Valdes said in a statement, “Size is not important when it comes to meteorites, and even tiny microscopic meteorites can be incredibly scientifically valuable, but of course, such Finding a large meteorite is rare and really exciting.” Statement,
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The team, which was led by Vincenzo Debel, a planetary scientist at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (FNRS-ULB) in Belgium, was the first to find new potential meteorite sites that were mapped using satellite imagery.
“It’s exciting to go on an adventure exploring uncharted territories, but we also had to deal with the fact that the reality on the ground is much more difficult than the beauty of the satellite images,” Deballe said in the statement.
At the end of December the team planned their trip to Antarctica for the summer, but temperatures in the region were still around minus 14 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 10 degrees Celsius). Valdes said that at some points during the mission, Antarctica was actually warmer than Chicago, but the weather felt more extreme to the team as they spent nights riding snowmobiles and trekking through snow fields and sleeping in tents .
With such cold conditions even in the middle of summer, Antarctica may seem like an unlikely place for anyone to choose to visit, yet for meteorite hunters like this team, this frigid vista offers unique opportunities. Is. This is because Antarctica is one of the best places in the world to hunt for meteorites.
Antarctica is a desert with a dry climate, which minimizes the amount of weathering experienced by meteorites. In addition, the black color of these space rocks stands out when they are on the surface of the region, in the white icy landscape.
Conditions in Antarctica are even more favorable for the search for meteorites buried under ice and snow. This is because the churning motion of glaciers moving against the rock can re-expose meteorites near the surface.
While there’s no denying it’s the largest meteorite ever recovered by the team, it’s far from the largest or largest example of such a space rock ever to reach Earth’s surface. This record is held by the Hoba meteorite in Namibia. The Hoba is 9 feet (2.7 m) tall, 9 feet wide and 3 feet (0.9 m) thick and weighs approximately 66 tons or 132,000 pounds (60,000 kg). It is about 7,765 times heavier than the newly discovered Antarctic meteorite.
The new space rock and other meteorites recovered by the researchers will now be analyzed at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, while team members will split up and study sediment samples collected from Antarctica.
Valdes is excited to learn what secrets the meteorites hold. “Studying meteorites helps us better understand their place in the universe,” she said. “The larger the sample size of meteorites we have, the better we can understand our solar system, and the better we can understand ourselves.”
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