[Rockhounds] Scientists Look in an Ancient Meteorite and Find Evidence of CO2-Laced Water

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

A team of researchers recently took a close look at an ancient meteorite
and determined that it contained carbon dioxide-rich water, a discovery
that has implications for the theory that water (and thus, life) first
arrived on Earth by way of these rocks.

The team’s results were published
<https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/17/eabg9707> this week in
Science Advances. Based on the presence of the carbon dioxide (CO2), the
team posits that the asteroid formed in a much colder part of the solar
system than our immediate vicinity; possibly beyond the orbit of Jupiter.

“Scientists further expect that liquid water should remain as fluid
inclusions in minerals that precipitated in aqueous fluid,” said Akira
Tsuchiyama, a geochemist at Ritsumeikan University in Japan, in a
university press release. “This achievement shows that our team could
detect a tiny fluid trapped in a mineral 4.6 billion years ago.”

The rock under inspection was the Sutter’s Mill meteorite, named for the
site that kicked off the California Gold Rush in 1848. The meteorite landed
near the site nine years ago today
<https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/metbull.php?code=55529>, and 90 fragments
of it have been found, weighing nearly a kilogram in total.

https://gizmodo.com/scientists-look-in-an-ancient-meteorite-and-find-eviden-1846741032