Monday, September 19, 2022 1:11 am
According to the British newspaper “Daily Mail”, Ashley King, a researcher in the collection of planetary materials at the Natural History Museum, said that 12% of the sample consists of water.
“The composition of that water is very similar to that of the water in the Earth’s oceans,” he told the British Science Festival, stressing, “It’s really good evidence that asteroids and objects like Winchcombe made a very important contribution to Earth’s oceans.”
Dr King also explained that this was the first time a meteorite containing terrestrial water had fallen outside Earth, albeit trapped in minerals, in the UK.
He added that because of the speed of recovery of the 1 pound (0.5 kg) meteorite, it was not contaminated with water and materials on Earth, stressing, “We always try to match the composition of water meteorites and other materials found outside Earth with the composition of water on Earth.”
Speaking at De Montfort University, which hosts the festival, she said analysis showed that the meteorite came from an asteroid somewhere near Jupiter, formed about 4.6 billion years ago, and took its journey to Earth about 300,000 years.
Source: Technology: Finding extraterrestrial water in a meteorite that fell in Britain for the first time