London – “The Gulf”
Researchers from the Natural History Museum in Britain have found extraterrestrial water for the first time in a meteorite that fell in the United Kingdom.
The Winchcombe meteorite, which fell in Gloucestershire in February last year, is believed to hold clues regarding the source of Earth’s vast oceans.
Ashley King, a researcher in the Planetary Materials Collection at the Natural History Museum, said 12 percent of the meteorite sample consisted of water.
He added, “The composition of the water in the meteorite is very similar to the composition of the water in the Earth’s oceans, which is evidence that asteroids and meteorites such as “Winckcombe” made a very important contribution to the Earth’s oceans.”
King stressed that “Winckcombe” is the only meteorite that falls to Earth and contains water, noting that it was not contaminated with water and materials on Earth.
He added, “We are trying to match the composition of water meteorites and other materials found outside Earth with the composition of water on Earth.” While most of the meteorites that we find are contaminated.
“One of the big questions we have in planetary science is where on Earth did the water come from,” the museum researchers said. And one of the obvious places is either through comets that have loads of ice in them, or through asteroids, and there is always a debate, were asteroids the main source?”
He explained that the composition of the water in “Winckcombe” is likely the main source of the water of the inner solar system to Earth, and we have data indicating that some asteroids match well with Earth, and “Winckcombe” confirms the same story.
Speaking at De Montfort University, which hosts the festival, Dr. King said the analysis showed that the meteorite came from an asteroid somewhere near Jupiter. It formed 4.6 billion years ago, and its journey to Earth took 300,000 years.
There are approximately 65,000 meteorites known on Earth.
