14 DAY TRIAL // Towards the end of this year's January, a team of researchers from Belgium and Japan stumbled upon a relatively large meteorite.
The extraterrestrial rock was discovered in East Antarctica, and the specialists who took to analyzing it explain that it weighs roughly 40 pounds (about 18 kilograms).
Although the meteorite is no more and no less than a chondrite, i.e. one of the most common type of space rocks found to have landed on Earth, the researchers wish to emphasize that its sheer size and weight make it stand out amongst others of its kind.
Furthermore, the people who found it and those who analyzed it make up explain that, given the weight of the space rock they discovered, the original meteorite must have been considerably bigger.
According to Space, Vinciane Debaille, a geologist currently working with the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium, commented with respect to the discovery of this meteorite in East Antarctica as follows:
“This is the biggest meteorite found in East Antarctica for 25 years. This is something very exceptional.”
“When you find such a meteorite on Earth, it means that when it was in the sky, it was much larger,” Vinciane Debaille went on to argue.
The same source informs us that, while exploring the East Antarctica in search for such bits and pieces of extraterrestrial rocks, these researchers managed to pin down a total of 425 meteorites, whose weight amounted to 165 pounds (75 kg).
It is being said, of these 425 pieces of extraterrestrial rock, one is a Mars meteorite and another one is a chunk of the asteroid Vesta.
By the looks of it, the 40-pound space rock now making headlines was first spotted by the scientists as they were criss-crossing the East Arctic plateau in their snowmobiles.
Interestingly enough, this meteorite appears to be the fifth largest ever discovered in this part of the world.