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A meteorite that crashed to Earth near Hamburg, Michigan in 2018 could offer new insights into the role of asteroids in transporting the building blocks of life to Earth, the researchers say.
Pieces of space rock, which have roughly traveled through the Earth’s atmosphere 36,000 miles per hour (57.936 km / h) causing an atmospheric shock wave equivalent to one magnitude 2.0 earthquake, were quickly recovered and have now been analyzed in detail as part of a newly published report.
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The Hamburg meteorite
Philipp Heck, co-author of the report and associate professor at the University of Chicago, and his team released their report detailing their analysis of space rock over the past two years.
“Finding a pebble-sized fragment on a frozen lake or in a blanket of snow is difficult if you don’t know where to look,” Philipp Heck, who is also the curator of the collection of meteorites, rocks and minerals at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, told The Guardian.
Small fragments of the space rock, dubbed the Hamburg meteorite, were recovered from the Strawberry and Bass lakes by meteorite hunters who acted on information from scientists who had charted its trajectory using NASA’s weather radar.
The new report reveals that the Hamburg meteorite is of a relatively rare subtype known as the H4 chondrite.
Increase our knowledge of asteroids
Heck and his team pointed out that the meteorite contained 2,600 several organic compounds, which supports the idea that meteorites may have played a role in transporting the building blocks of life to our planet.
“I personally found it astounding how many organic compounds were still in this meteorite despite its thermal metamorphism,” said Heck. The Guardian.
Impressively, by analyzing the argon in the meteorite, the team also found that the space rock was ejected from its parent asteroid some 12 million Years ago.
Heck and his team say the piece of meteorite they analyzed was relatively pristine for a sample found on Earth. However, in order to gain even greater understanding of space rocks, the scientific community is seeking to analyze samples extracted directly from asteroids, such as those collected by the course NASA OSIRIS-REx mission, which is expected to return to Earth in 2023.
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