Cosmic Cannonball Meteorite at 17 Pounds Found in Antarctica After Thousands of Years in Blue Ice

After spending tens of thousands of years submerged in blue ice, a meteorite, a cosmic cannonball weighing 17 pounds, was discovered in Antarctica.

One of the heaviest meteorites ever found, in addition to four other frozen space rocks that most likely collided with the icy continent thousands of years ago, was recently retrieved by scientists in Antarctica.

Cosmic Cannon Ball

The mini hoard of meteorites was discovered by researchers on the Nils Larsen blue ice zone's surface close to the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica station, which is owned by Belgium. The most notable of the five meteorites was a huge, cantaloupe-sized rock that weighed 16.7 pounds. Only about 100 of the 45,000 meteorites found in Antarctica were as massive as this cosmic cannonball.

Maria Valdes, one of the scientists that participated in the expedition, said that when it comes to meteorites, size doesn't always matter, and even tiny micrometeorites could be incredibly useful for science. Valdes, who is also a Field Museum meteorologist in Chicago, still thinks that it is exciting and rare to discover a large meteorite like this one.

Thousands of Years in Blue Ice

Early in January, the meteorites were discovered on the ice's surface; however, they had not recently collided with Earth. Instead, it is more likely that the space rocks were submerged in the blue ice for thousands of years before coming to the surface due to the glaciers' churning motion. However, the researchers found that the meteorites were still entirely intact because they were protected from precipitation, wind, and air beneath the ice.

Ryoga Maeda, also an expedition scientist, told The Brussels Times that the asteroids, which are from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter's orbit, are thought to have fallen into the Antarctic blue ice many tens of thousands of years ago. Maeda is a doctoral student at the Free University of Brussels.

Meteorites in Antarctica

Normally, searching the ice sheets for meteorites is necessary for scientists. However, a previous study allowed the researchers to focus their search. By using satellite data as well as a type of artificial intelligence known as machine learning, a paper that identified regions of Antarctica where meteorite clusters had higher chances of being brought to the surface was completed and published in 2022, in the journal Science Advances. The newly discovered meteorites were found in one of those hotspots.

However, even with a specific area to look for them, it still required a lot of effort to find the meteorites.

Vinciane Debaille, the lead expedition scientist, said that the beauty of satellite images is very different when compared to the difficulty of the real world. Debaille is a geochemist at the Free University of Brussels.

For their own research, each expedition scientist was able to bring back samples of potential meteorite dust that they had collected from the area around the space rocks that had fallen, according to the statement. The meteorite samples gathered during the expedition have been sent to the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels for proper thawing and analysis.

The expedition is the first to investigate one of the satellite study's identified potential hotspots for meteorites. The success of the expedition team suggests that other researchers may be able to recover many more frozen meteor fragments using the study. In the study, researchers predicted that up to 300,000 meteorites might be waiting on the ice's surface, meaning that only about 15% have been found so far.

The expedition team is hoping to find more meteorites to help us understand our cosmic surroundings, Live Science reports.