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A meteorite that hit a UK driveway offers strong clues to the origin of life on Earth. Space rock contains water, which is very similar to the water on our planet.
Water was crucial for the emergence of life on Earth. But scientists don’t yet know how this water got here. A widely held theory is that asteroids outside our solar system brought water with them. The meteorite that crashed in the English village of Winchcombe in February 2021 supports this theory.
When an asteroid or meteoroid hits the Earth, we call it a meteorite. The Winchcombe specimen is one of the purest meteorites ever discovered, says British Natural History Museum researcher Ashley King.
Investigators arrived shortly after the impact. As a result, the stone was barely exposed to the elements. For example, the rain could have obscured the research on the meteorite.
In the laboratory, it turned out that the meteorite was no less than 4.6 billion years old. The impact was also reflected in numerous CCTV footage in the residential area. This allowed the researchers to calculate where the space rock came from. Probably from the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars. The meteorite took nearly 300,000 years to get here.
According to King, the composition of the water in the found meteorite matches the water in our oceans. “That could mean that asteroids were the main source of water,” he says. The research was published in the scientific journal Scientists progress.
