Rare meteorite lands at London museum
Friday, 20 Jun 2008 00:01
Researchers at London's Natural History Museum have been given a rare piece of a meteorite to study that could reveal secrets of the birth of the solar system.
The Ivuna meteorite could reveal secrets about the solar system
The meteorite, named Ivuna, landed in Tanzania in 1938.
It has not been available for research until now as most samples of the rock are held in private collections or by the Tanzanian government.
Ivuna is an extremely rare kind of meteorite whose chemical make-up matches the Sun.
It is thought to represent the raw materials from which the solar system formed; only nine out of the 35,000 meteorites (0.03 per cent) known to science have this solar composition.
"Ivuna is a real-life time capsule that means we can look at the very first steps of how our solar system formed," said Dr Caroline Smith, meteorite curator at the Natural History Museum.
"We hold one of the most comprehensive meteorite collections in the world, yet Ivuna has been a missing piece in the jigsaw.
"If we can better understand the complex processes that occurred in our solar system over 4.5 billion years ago, we can apply this to other stellar systems where planets are forming today."
One question that Ivuna could be used to help answer is whether the chemical building blocks for life came from the stars.
The meteorite will also be a specimen in a new meteorites gallery, which the museum is planning for the near future.