 Radio Script 2000 __________________
Canadian Meteorite
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INTRO: The U.S. spent billions to send a man to the moon and billions more on probes to Mars and other planets to collect rocks for study back home. But as Doug Schneider reports in this week's Arctic Science Journeys Radio, Canadian scientists recently got lucky when a rare type of meteorite thought to hold clues to the origins of life in the solar system literally dropped into their lap. STORY: It came streaking across the early morning sky last January 18th. A meteorite 50 feet in diameter hurtled into earth's atmosphere at over 60,000 miles per hour. As it passed over a frozen lake in northern British Columbia, the meteorite exploded with a force equal to three kilotons of TNT. Dr. Richard Herd, curator of Canada's National Meteorite Collection, says the sonic explosion and fireball was seen--and felt--on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border. HERD: "And it was obvious pretty quickly that this was probably the biggest meteor that had been seen over land in many years. And so the question was, had anything fallen?" Most meteorites either burn up in the atmosphere or break apart into fragments so small that they're never recovered. Scientists hoped that the large size of this meteorite--some 50 tons--might mean that some pieces would have survived the descent. Someone--officials won't say who--found two egg-size samples of the meteorite. HERD: "Everything that has happened has been textbook. It's just about everything we would want. The material fell into a remote area but it was recovered and it was recovered frozen and kept frozen." Officials also won't disclose the exact location of the find, for fear of encouraging treasure hunters. That fear may be justified, since according to Herd, the meteorite is of a very rare type that may hold the best look yet at the origins of life in our solar system. HERD: "It's a chondrite, but it's a primitive chondrite. An initial glance at it has found that it is a carbonaceous chondrite. Now among meteorites, these are the most primitive. These things represent the composition of the sun, if you just take away the gaseous components. In other words, they formed in the early phase of the formation of our solar system." Carbonaceous chondrites are important because they contain, quite literally, cosmic dust at least as old as the sun. Much of that dust is carbon in the form of diamonds, silicon carbide, ice and gases. Such meteorites, says Herd, even contain amino acids, and are believed by some to be the mechanism that seeded life on earth, and perhaps elsewhere. HERD: "It's been argued for many, many years that carbonaceous chondrites, because they contain organic matter, may have something to do with life. Maybe, who knows?" But while such questions are no doubt on the minds of scientists all over the world, the meteorite is also expected to help solve more down-to-earth questions. For example, radiation levels present in the meteorite can be used to measure the solar winds. HERD: "Secondly, the kind of radiation you find will tell you something about the size of the body that these fragments were a part of, and possibly how long those fragments were out in space since the last time they cracked off the parent body." But beyond that, scientists are approaching their research on the Canadian meteorite slowly. They've never had such a perfect, uncontaminated sample before to study, and they want to do it right. Despite a $500 reward, Herd doubts that more meteorite fragments will be found, as more than a foot of snow has fallen since the crash. And come spring, what fragments remain likely will simply melt away. OUTRO: This is Arctic Science Journeys Radio, a production of the Alaska Sea Grant Program and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. I'm Doug Schneider. Listen to more of our interview with Dr. Richard Herd Thanks to the following individual for help preparing this script:
Dr. Richard Herd, curator For more information about meteorites, visit these web pages:
Natural Resources Canada
Canadian Meteorite catalogue
Other articles on the Canadian Meteorite
Arctic Science Journeys is a radio service highlighting science, culture, and the environment of the circumpolar north. Produced by the Alaska Sea Grant College Program and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Alaska Sea Grant Homepage The URL for this page is http://seagrant.uaf.edu/news/00ASJ/03.16.00_Meteorite.html |
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