![]() These cameras “are pointing at the sky the whole time,” always recording, looking out for any notable flashes or objects streaking through the sky, says Jim Rowe, the group’s organizer. Over the past decade, six different networks of sky-facing cameras, run by both amateur and professional researchers, have been integrated into the U.K. have improved their odds by setting up cameras designed to spy fireballs, which are used to work out where the fragments fall to Earth. In recent years, meteorite hunters in the U.K. On Christmas Eve 1964 a meteorite “bounced off a driveway, through someone’s window, and landed under their Christmas tree,” says Matthew Genge, a meteorite expert at Imperial College London. But occasionally space rocks serendipitously fall right in front of people’s noses. The United Kingdom is small, so meteorites don’t strike the islands often, and it is full of cities and vegetation, making meteorites difficult to find. The vast majority of collected meteorites are found in deserts, particularly the cold desert of Antarctica, a huge expanse where conveyor belt-like ice flows deposit space debris in specific areas, and the continent’s white hues allow black meteorites to easily stand out. Even when they do, many tumble into the oceans. Meteorites smash into Earth all the time, but most are not big enough to announce themselves with a fireball. “For our meteorite group, it’s the most important acquisition, I would say, ever.” Time capsules from above “We’ve all just gone bananas,” says Sara Russell, a planetary scientist at London’s Natural History Museum. But the rarity of the meteorite, combined with the speed with which it was recovered, has caused the meteorite community to explode with jubilation. The scientific work on what will likely become known as the Winchcombe meteorite has only just begun. It’s an intriguing possibility, but additional research is needed to say one way or the other. “Could it be a new meteorite type, a new meteorite class, something we’ve never seen before?” asks Luke Daly, a meteorite expert at the University of Glasgow. ![]() Each of the fragments studied so far appears to be a little different from the others. Strangely, at first glance, the chemistry, minerals, and textures of the meteorite don’t seem to belong to any one type of carbonaceous chondrite. “This is like the magic type of meteorite that lots of people are completely fascinated by,” says Katherine Joy, a meteorite expert at the University of Manchester. ![]() These ancient fragments contain not only the building blocks of planets, but also compounds that may help explain how Earth got its water or even provide clues for how life itself got started. It turns out that the meteorite-the first found in the United Kingdom in 30 years-is a rather rare type known as a carbonaceous chondrite. Speedily transporting the samples to the laboratories was crucial to ensuring that Earth’s environment didn’t significantly alter the chemistry of these near-pristine materials from space. Check out some examples here.About 18 ounces of space rock have been found so far, all of which was promptly delivered to a select few scientific institutions-chiefly London’s Natural History Museum-for preliminary analysis. There have been plenty of instances where rocks have “fallen” from the sky due to a variety of human activity. Not every rock that appears to fall from the sky out of nowhere is a meteorite. There are many reasons that rocks may appear to fall from the sky. Less than one in 1000 of the objects presented to the University for identification have proven to be meteorites. With the wide diversity of rocks that Minnesota is home to, locating a meteorite extremely unlikely. Most meteorites are found in deserts and Antarctica because they are easier to differentiate from the bare rock/ground and ice that dominates those landscapes. Minnesota has an amazing geological history which has left us with a lot of rocks that are very interesting to look at, but finding a meteorite in Minnesota is highly unusual. Statistically speaking it is highly unlikely to stumble upon a meteorite. The most realistic answer is that your rock is probably not a meteorite.
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