Antarctica is a tough place to work for for obvious reasons: it’s very cold, remote, and wild. However, it is one of the best places in the world to hunt meteorites. This is partly because Antarctica is a desert, and its dry climate limits the degree of weathering experienced by meteorites. In addition to dry conditions, the landscape is ideal for meteorite hunting: black space rocks clearly stand out in the snow-covered fields. Even as meteorites sink into the ice, the turbulent movement of glaciers against the rock beneath helps meteorites re-emerge near the surface of the continent’s blue ice fields.
An international team of researchers, fresh from Antarctica, can confirm that the continent is searching for meteorites easily: They returned with five new meteorites, one weighing 16.7 pounds (7.6 kg).
Maria Valdez, a researcher at the Field Museum and the University of Chicago, estimates that of the approximately 45,000 meteorites removed from Antarctica in the past century, only one hundred are this size or larger. “Size doesn’t necessarily matter when it comes to meteorites, and even small micrometeorites can be incredibly valuable from a scientific point of view,” says Valdes, “but of course finding a meteorite this large is rare and really exciting.”
Valdés was one of four scientists on the mission led by Vincentian Debail of the Free University of Brussels (FNRS-ULB); The research group was supported by Maria Schönbechler (ETH-Zurich) and Ryoga Maeda (VUB-ULB). The researchers were the first to discover potential new meteorite sites mapped using satellite imagery by Veronika Tollenaar, a glaciology student at ULB.
Rocks scattered across an ice field as scientists look for meteorites in the background. Credit: Contributed by Maria Valdez
“It’s exciting to embark on an adventure exploring unknown regions,” Debaye says, “but we also had to deal with the fact that reality on the ground is far more complex than the beauty of satellite imagery.” Although their voyage coincided with the Antarctic summer in late December, the temperature was around -10°C (14°F). Valdez notes that during his trips to Chicago, some days are actually colder than Antarctica, but days of snowmobiling and hiking on ice fields and then sleeping in a tent make the Antarctic weather more extreme.
The five meteorites found by the team will be analyzed at the Belgian Royal Institute of Natural Sciences; Meanwhile, the residue, potentially containing tiny micrometeorites, was shared among researchers for study at their institution.
Valdez says he’s dying to see what the meteorite analysis reveals because “studying meteorites helps us better understand our place in the universe. The larger the sample size of meteorites we have, the better we can understand our solar system and ourselves.” The team was led by Manu Pudele of the International Association of Polar Guides and supported by Alain Hubert. They were partially supported by the Belgian Science Policy. Valdez’s work is supported by the Robert A. Pritzker Center for Meteorology and Polar Studies, the TAWANI Foundation, and the Meeker family.
Source: Port Altele
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