Meteorite

Australian scientists have discovered strangely folded diamonds in rare meteorite samples. In investigating how they came to form, the team found evidence that they were forged in a cataclysm on an ancient dwarf planet.

Evidence is mounting that the key building blocks of life may have been delivered to our home planet from space. Scientists have now identified in meteorites the last two DNA nucleobases that hadn’t yet been found in extraterrestrial samples.

Researchers have discovered a new mineral in a meteorite from the Moon. Named donwilhemsite, the mineral appears to form under high pressures and may play a crucial role in the rock cycle deep within the Earth.

A new study by the Centre de Recherches Pétrographiques et Géochimiques in Nancy, France suggests that Earth's water may have come from stony meteorites in the inner solar system rather than distant comets from billions of miles away.

One small, particularly puzzling group of meteorites appears to have been both solid rock and liquid metal. Now scientists have determined that the parent body had a rocky shell and a liquid metal core, which likely generated a strong magnetic field.

Scientists have discovered a full, previously-unknown protein inside a meteorite for the first time. Named hemolithin, the new protein contains iron and lithium and may play an important role in seeding life on habitable planets like Earth.

Scientists have identified the oldest impact site ever to scar our planet’s surface. The body that formed the Yarrabubba crater in the Australian outback struck Earth 2.229 billion years ago, and may have helped end a global ice age.

Researchers have discovered the oldest material on Earth – and it’s not from Earth. Tiny grains from a meteorite that fell in Australia were found to be between 5 and 7 billion years old, meaning they predate our planet, the Sun and the solar system.

The latest ingredients of life to be discovered off-world are certain bio-essential sugars, which have now been found in meteorites. This could lend weight to the idea that meteorite impacts are responsible for the origin of life on Earth.

A team of scientists led by Ken Amor from the Department of Earth Sciences at Oxford University has uncovered evidence of the largest meteor ever to strike the British Isles.

Meteorites can tell us stories of ancient stars and long-lost planets. One of these stories has now been uncovered in a piece of space rock retrieved from Antarctica, containing grains from a stellar explosion that predates the Sun.

Scientists have discovered a tiny fragment of a comet in a meteorite. The bulk of the rock itself was once an asteroid, but when the team cracked it open and analyzed the inside, they found that the growing asteroid must have swept up the seed of a comet billions of years ago.