As of: 01/20/2023 4:09 p.m
He is said to weigh seven kilos and has been on earth for tens of thousands of years. An international research team has found a meteorite in Antarctica. The find could provide insights into the origin of planets.
A team of researchers found a meteorite near the South Pole. According to the Free University of Brussels, it originally came from the asteroid belt of our solar system. It is said to have impacted the earth tens of thousands of years ago.
“A very nice present”
The meteorite weighs 7.6 kilograms. “It’s pretty extraordinary,” Belgian researcher Vinciane Debaille, who led the expedition, told RTBF. 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 ten degrees below zero and between snow dunes.
Finds from glacier hikes
“Antarctica is suitable for finding meteorites because the black stones are clearly visible on the white snow,” Swiss researcher and expedition member Maria Schönbächler 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 Debaille, the stones can provide insights into the origin of the solar system and the planets, since they consist of dust grains that arose before the planets. The chemical composition of the stone from space is now to be examined in Brussels.