A meteorite that struck Britain’s Pass provides strong evidence for the origin of life on Earth. The space rock contains water very similar to the water on our planet.
Water was crucial to the emergence of life on Earth. But scientists are not yet sure how this water got here. The popular theory is that asteroids from outside our solar system brought the water with them. The meteorite that hit the English village of Winchcombe in February 2021 supports this theory.
When an asteroid or meteorite hits the Earth, we call it a meteorite. Researcher Ashley King of the British Museum of Natural History says the specimen at Winchcombe is one of the purest meteorites ever found.
Investigators arrived shortly after the crash. As a result, the stone was barely exposed to the elements. For example, rain may have soaked the meteorite research.
In the laboratory it turned out that the meteorite was not less than 4.6 billion years old. The effect was also reflected on many CCTV images in the residential area. This allowed the researchers to calculate the source of the space rock. Probably from the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars. It took the meteorite nearly 300,000 years to get here.
According to King, the composition of the water in the meteorite found corresponds to the water in our oceans. “It could mean that asteroids were the main source of water,” he says. The research has been published in the scientific journal Science advances.
