The discovery of the oldest meteorite on Earth two million years ago

science and technology

Researchers discovered an ancient meteorite dating back to two million years, the oldest ever on earth. The team of scientists from the University of Aix-Marseille, France, worked on this unprecedented discovery of 388 separate meteorites in the South American Atacama Desert.

According to the Daily Mail, they also calculated the average rate of fall of the comet's debris over time. The results confirm that 222 meteorites greater than 10 grams per square kilometer fell every million years, 30% of the samples found were more than 1 million Year, while there were two more than two million.

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They are all rocky meteors containing minerals, where the team chose its location because of its cooler climate, helping to keep meteors from erosion. While Antarctica and hot deserts host a large proportion of meteorites on earth, about 64% Are rarely more than half a million years old, limiting long-term analysis.

"Our goal in this work was to find out how the meteoric flow to Earth changed over time periods of millions of years, in line with astronomical phenomena," says Alexis Dreward, lead author of the study. "The Atacama Desert was chosen in a very ancient Chile dating back to more than 10 million years old, also hosts the most dense range of meteorites in the world.

"This ground-based crop of meteorites at Atacama could encourage further research into the study of meteorite flows over large time scales," he said.

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