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On January 16, 2018, there were sightings of a fireball in the sky over Michigan in the US.

The following day, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) confirmed it was a meteorite that had exploded in the atmosphere.

At the time, the loud ‘boom’ and subsequent earthquake it caused roughly 40 miles from Detroit, was reported to register at 2,0 on the Richter scale, but for the USGS and NASA, it didn’t seem like that big of a deal.

Locals disagreed, and 911 emergency lines were inundated with calls.

911 asked everyone to stop calling and calm down.

The massive flash of light was captured on a dashboard camera:

More clips of the flash from security cameras in the area:

With all the disaster movies out there, you can see why people panicked.

It has been well over two years since the meteorite fell to Earth, and while scientists were ambivalent about its entry, they were pretty amped about the fact that some of it managed to survive the journey through Earth’s atmosphere.

According to CNN, it’s 12 million years old, and covered in more than 2 600 organic compounds, as revealed by new research.

“Weather radar is meant to detect hail and rain,” said lead study author Philipp Heck, curator at the Field Museum in Chicago and associate professor at the University of Chicago, in a statement.

“These pieces of meteorite fell into that size range, and so weather radar helped show the position and velocity of the meteorite. That meant that we were able to find it very quickly.”

Elements native to Earth can change the chemical makeup of a meteor, but because it was collected so quickly, within two days, it maintained its integrity.

The tiny piece of meteorite pictured above was found by Robert Ward, sitting on the frozen surface of Strawberry Lake, which is near Hamburg, Michigan.

“This meteorite is special because it fell onto a frozen lake and was recovered quickly. It was very pristine. We could see the minerals weren’t much altered and later found that it contained a rich inventory of extraterrestrial organic compounds,” Heck said.

“These kinds of organic compounds were likely delivered to the early Earth by meteorites and might have contributed to the ingredients of life.”

Here’s what the scientists, based at over 24 different institutions, have learned since 2018.

It took the meteorite 12 million years to make the journey to our planet after it separated from its parent asteroid, which was formed around 4,5 billion years ago, only about 20 million years after the formation of our solar system.

Here’s Jennika Greer, a doctoral student at the Field Museum and the University of Chicago, who worked on the study:

“This meteorite shows a high diversity of organics, in that if somebody was interested in studying organics, this is not normally the type of meteorite that they would ask to look at,” Greer said.

“But because there was so much excitement surrounding it, everybody wanted to apply their own technique to it, so we have an unusually comprehensive set of data for a single meteorite.”

Back to Heck for why the findings are important:

“The fact that this ordinary chondrite meteorite was rich in organics provides support of the hypothesis that meteorites played an important role in delivering organic compounds to early Earth,” Heck said.

“Meteorites fell to our planet throughout Earth’s history also before life formed and possibly delivered some of the building blocks for life onto Earth.”

The scientists say that they’re on the lookout for more meteorites.

That’s fine by me, so long as they’re only 5mm in size.

[source:cnn]