National Geographic tells us that over 60,000 meteorites were found on Earth, and they were divided into three main types: iron, stony, and stony-iron. Each of these types has multiple sub-groups.
According to Yahoo! News, the Winchcombe meteorite has now become official. It’s none other than the same meteorite that fell in the Cotswold town of Winchcombe back in February.
The Winchcombe object dates back to the beginning of the Solar System
A space object that dates back roughly 4.6 billion years ago, meaning to the very beginning of the Solar System itself, indeed deserves some special treatment. It’s also the case of the Winchcombe meteorite, as UK scientists discovered.
The predominant compounds of Winchcombe are represented by Phyllosilicates, meaning minerals that can result from silicate rocks when they come in contact with water.
Researchers who were led by the Natural History Museum (NHM) at London claim that the meteorite is a member of the CM2 carbonaceous chondrites.
While speaking for the Science In Action programme on the BBC World Service, Dr. Ashley King from the NHM said as quoted by BBC:
Carbonaceous chondrites are probably the oldest and most primitive extra-terrestrial materials we have available to study,
They come from asteroids that formed right back at the start of our Solar System,
They’re like time capsules. They’re telling us about the building blocks of our Solar System. Obviously, we weren’t there 4.6 billion years ago, and these meteorites are a way for us to actually see what sort of materials were there, and how those materials started to come together to make the planets.
We can all consider ourselves lucky, as millions of meteorites are travelling through our atmosphere every day. Most of them are too small to make it to the surface – instead, they are vaporized due to air friction.
Details about the Winchcombe meteorite becoming official were published in the bulletin database of the Meteoritical Society.
