Winchcombe meteorite bolsters Earth water theory
A meteorite that crashed on the Gloucestershire town of Winchcombe last year contained water that was a near-perfect match for that on Earth.
This bolsters the idea rocks from space brought key chemical components, including water, to the planet early in its history, billions of years ago.
The meteorite is regarded as the most important recovered in the UK.
Scientists publishing their first detailed analysis say it has yielded fascinating insights.
More than 500g (1lb) of blackened debris was picked up from people’s gardens and driveways and local fields, after a giant fireball lit up the night sky.
The crumbly remains were carefully catalogued at London’s Natural History Museum (NHM) and then loaned to teams across Europe to investigate.
Water accounted for up to 11 percent of the meteorite’s weight – and it contained a very similar ratio of hydrogen atoms to the water on Earth.
Some scientists say the young Earth was so hot it would have driven off much of its volatile content, including water.
For the Earth to have so much today – 70 percent of its surface is covered by ocean – suggests there must have been a later addition.
Some say this could have come from a bombardment of icy comets – but their chemistry is not a great match.
Carbonaceous chondrites, however – meteorites such as the Winchcombe one – most certainly are.
And the fact it was recovered less than 12 hours after crashing means it had absorbed very little earthly water, or indeed any contaminants.
“All other meteorites have been compromised in some way by the terrestrial environment,” co-first author Dr Ashley King, from the NHM, told BBC News.
“But Winchcombe is different because of the speed with which it was picked up.
“This means when we measure it, we know the composition we’re looking at takes us all the way back to the composition at the beginning of the Solar System, 4.6 billion years ago.
“Bar fetching rock samples back from an asteroid with a spacecraft, we could not have a more pristine specimen.”
Precise trajectory
Scientists examining the meteorite’s carbon- and nitrogen-bearing organic compounds, including its amino acids, had a similarly clean picture.
This is the type of chemistry that could have been a feedstock for biology to begin on the early Earth.
The new analysis also confirms the meteorite’s origin.
Camera footage of the fireball has allowed researchers to work out a very precise trajectory.
Calculating backwards, this indicates the meteorite came from the outer asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Further investigations reveal it was knocked off the top few metres of a parent asteroid, presumably in some collision.
It then took only 200,000 to 300,000 years to arrive on Earth, the number of particular atoms, such as neon, created in the meteorite material through the constant irradiation from high-speed space particles, or cosmic rays, reveals.
“0.2-0.3 million years sounds like quite a long time – but from a geological perspective, it’s actually very quick,” Dr Helena Bates, from the NHM, said.
“Carbonaceous chondrites have to get here quickly or they won’t survive, because they’re so crumbly, so friable, they’ll just break apart.”
‘More secrets’
The scientists first analysis, in this week’s edition of the Science Advances journal, is just an overview of Winchcombe’s properties.
A dozen more papers on specialist topics are due to come out shortly in an issue of the Meteoritics & Planetary Science journal.
And even they will not be the last word.
“Researchers will continue to work on this specimen for years to come, unlocking more secrets into the origins of our Solar System,” co-first author Dr Luke Daly, from the University of Glasgow, said.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
How can one deny that The Holy Bible is the oldest history book in existence? Forget about any theology involved. It begins, from the beginning, with alternative explanation, for the formation of the Earth and Universe, then the one reads about in this article. The following is from the NIV translation of ancient writings.
Genesis 1:2 “Now the earth was formless empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the WATERS.” Verse 6, 7: “And God said, “Let there be an expanse to separate water from water.” So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. … “ Verse 9: “And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear. … “ Verse 14-16: Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.” … God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.”
This explains the the formation of the physical earth and universe. However in the ‘middle’ of this very brief description verse 11,12: “Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation; seed- bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds”. … “ Hence, there was “life” which we have yet to find any place in the physical universe except the Earth.
As I stated: “Forget the theology.” I ask: Do these few verses describe the the earth with which you are familiar? If they do, it must be quite difficult for one to ignore this alternative explanation relative to which that the author (s’) of this article wrote.
An apparent TRUTH is: BOTH cannot be CORRECT.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Chris*
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Hi Jerry – there are so many questions. Is the Earth older than the sun, it appears that the bible is suggesting that. As we know the sun is made of hydrogen( 1 proton ) and fusion creates helium ( 2 protons). But the Earth is made up of hard metals suggesting that fusion in the core has been going on for a very long time, longer than the sun has existed. The Russians put forward the hypothesis in the 1950’s that hydrocarbons are a byproduct of fusion in the core. This was confirmed in 2008 by Johns Hopkins university where scientists were were able to conduct experiments at the pressure and temperature of the Upper Mantle. They used EthaneC2 H6 the final products were methane, toluene and graphite. It blows the “fossil fuel” mantra out of the water and the climate scare stories with it.
The first sentence in the Bible ‘ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’
Beginning of what ? – the beginning of time
God created the heavens – space ; and the earth – matter .
God is outside time, space and matter.
We know stuff all.
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aaron
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don’t confuse theory and hypothesis with fact
fact is no one knows, its all opinion
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Chris*
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Aaron, I should have added that the scientists at Johns Hopkins were able to reverse the experiment, thus turning Methane into Ethane. Their conclusion was that the upper Mantle is full of hydrocarbons and that we have an inexhaustible supply of energy. This is more than a hypothesis or a theory.
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