Meteorite Hunters Find 17-Pound Space Rock in Antarctica

Researchers combing the surface of Antarctica for space rock have hit the jackpot by finding five meteorites in the crust, one of which weighs about 17 pounds.

Expedition The team found meteorites sitting on top of the snow in Antarctica, where the black bodies of rock stuck out against the white snow of the continent. It is Antarctica the best place to find relatively undisturbed space rocks; because the dryness of its climate prevents excessive storms. Maria Valdes, research scientist at the Field Museum and the University of Chicago, and his team found a total of five meteorites during the hunt in December, one of which weighed 16.7 pounds (7.6 kilograms).

“Meteorite size doesn’t necessarily matter when it comes to meteorites, and even the smallest micrometeorites can be incredibly valuable,” Valdes said in announcement. “But of course, finding a large meteorite like this is rare, and really exciting.”

Valdes thinks of the ten thousand meteorites that have been found in Antarctica, only about 100 are as large as the one his team found. To find out meteorites, researchers they rode on snowmobiles and He walked in places that had been previously divided and identified through satellite imagery as a potential harbor for meteorite spots. When the team found the suspected meteorite, they used equipment to test the rock’s magnetic propertiesValdes explained in an email as Gizmodo. While most of these meteorites remain on the surface, even those that descend into the ice seem to emerge to change and move masses.

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“Entry is an exciting opportunity to explore unknown areas,” Vinciane Debaille, a member of the research team from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, said in a statement. “Bthat even we must deal with a thing on earth much more difficult than the beauty of satellite images.

While the discovery is exciting, the next step for physicists is to determine what meteorites are can tell us about the universe. The five rocks Valdes and his team found while being analyzed at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, since only specimens from the area are being analyzed by the team themselves.