Meteorite
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Asteroids are the leftovers from the formation of the solar system, and they can tell us a lot about those early years. Now scientists have studied a weird space rock and found that it’s the oldest known igneous meteorite, dating back to one of the very first volcanic eruptions in the solar system.
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The Sun was far more active in its early years, but we only really know this from studying other similar stars. Now, researchers have found the fingerprints of this active young Sun in tiny, bright blue crystals preserved in meteorites from a collection at Chicago’s Field Museum.
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They might seem like boring rocks, but asteroids and meteorites have fascinating stories to tell about the history of the solar system. New research from the University of Florida has now traced back the origins of almost all asteroids in the inner belt to just five or six ancient minor planets.
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According to the results of a new study, soon after the creation of the solar system, Mars may have formed a primordial crust capable of hosting life. The research is based on an analysis of the rare and super-valuable Black Beauty meteorite, which was discovered in the Sahara Desert back in 2011.
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