A minuscule meteorite unlike any聽other we have discovered could help us understand the kinds of rocks that fill our solar system.
Maitrayee Bose at Arizona State University and her colleagues in a 2-millimetre meteorite found in Antarctica, called TAM19B-7. When they looked at the different carbon isotopes in the micrometeorite, they聽were in for a surprise.
鈥淪ome of the areas in the micrometeorite have the exact same composition as Earth,鈥� says Bose. 鈥淏ut there were some regions that were carbon-13-rich hotspots, which is something that we didn鈥檛 expect to find at all.鈥�
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The team spotted four of these little pockets of heavy carbon. The research was to have been presented at the now-cancelled Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas.
The oxygen levels in the micrometeorite didn鈥檛 match any聽known asteroid. It is usually possible to match a micrometeorite to the asteroid family it belongs to, although not with this sample.
But we know its parent rock contained frozen water because of聽the abundance of other isotopes in the micrometeorite, primarily those of oxygen, says Bose.
鈥淚t comes from a body that has lots of ice, and when that ice melts it聽interacts with the rock,鈥� she says. 鈥淭he question is: can you make important, life-critical compounds by this interaction with water?鈥�
On Earth, reactions between water and rocks can form sugars, amino acids and other chemicals important for life. Finding the micrometeorite鈥檚 mysterious parent could help us figure out if similar activity can occur on asteroids.
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