astronomy
Research team finds meteorite weighing 7.6 kilos
Researchers from Belgium have discovered a meteorite weighing 7.6 kilograms in Antarctica. photo
© Maria Valdes/Vinciane Debaille/dpa
Belgian scientists have made an extraordinary find deep in Antarctica. They discovered a meteorite that is a lot heavier than the usual finds.
Researchers have found a meteorite weighing 7.6 kilograms near the South Pole. It originally came from the asteroid belt of our solar system and had waited tens of thousands of years for its discovery after its arrival on earth, as the Free University of Brussels (ULB) announced.
“It’s pretty extraordinary,” Belgian researcher Vinciane Debaille, who led the expedition, told RTBF. The meteorites found usually weigh between 10 and 50 grams. “It is a very nice gift that we found in the last hour of our last day of searching.”
Debaille discovered the meteorite together with an international team on an expedition around 60 kilometers from the Princess Elisabeth polar research station in Antarctica. With the help of satellite images and GPS coordinates, the researchers found numerous meteorites in the area. To do this, they sometimes had to camp under difficult conditions at 10 degrees below zero and between snow dunes.
“Antarctica is suitable for finding meteorites because the black stones are clearly visible on the white snow,” Swiss researcher Maria Schönbächler, who also took part in the expedition, told the Keystone-SDA news agency. Meteorites are repeatedly uncovered in the million-year-old ice due to the migration of the glaciers.
According to expedition leader Debaille, the stones can provide insights into the origin of the solar system and the planets, since they consist of dust grains that formed before the planets. The chemical composition of the stone from space is now to be examined in a laboratory in Brussels.