On January 16, 2020, the skies over Ontario and the midwestern United States lit up as a meteorite crashed into a frozen lake in Michigan.
By the time the meteorite landed, it was the size of a walnut. Most of the meteorite broke up as it flew through Earth's atmosphere. But, that tiny piece contained thousands of organic chemicals that are billions of years old.
They used weather radar data to pinpoint the meteorite's descent. The fragment landed in Strawberry Lake in Hamburg, Michigan.
If water had time to seep into the meteorite, the water could contaminate the meteorite with spores and microbes. Thankfully, it was retrieved before that happened.
Some of these molecules even formed when our solar system was still young. This finding can help us understand the origins of life on Earth.
It is possible that similar fragments seeded the Earth with the building blocks of life.
The friction caused by the atmosphere creates extreme heat that melted away 90% of the meteorite. As the meteorite melted, it became encased in a layer of glass.
This glass layer helped to protect the fragment from contamination once it landed.
Although the meteorite is new to us, it is actually 470 million years old. It broke off of a larger L chondrite -- a type of stony meteorite -- when the parent was destroyed in a collision.
The collision created many smaller meteorites, many of which have already landed on Earth and become fossilized. The latest meteorite is currently in the Field Museum.
h/t: Live Science
