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It looks like a broken barbeque brickette, but the newfound meteorite is a capsule of the Solar System's history that could reveal the secrets of the origin of life.
In a major event for UK science, the meteorite that fell from the fireball that lit up the sky over the UK and Northern Europe on Sunday 28 February, has.
As people in the UK were settling down to watch the late evening news on February 28, a fresh news story, quite literally, appeared in the night sky. A large and very bright fireball was seen over southern England and northern France at 21:54 GMT. It was recorded by many doorbell webcams, so it was a very well-observed fireball. More importantly, it was also captured by the automated cameras of the UK Meteor Observation Network and similar networks.
Working with colleagues in France and Australia, the meteor-watchers worked out the fireball’s trajectory and determined where the meteorite pieces could be located, just north of Cheltenham in the UK. Based on their calculations, Ashley King, a specialist in meteorites at the Natural History Museum in London, made an appeal on local TV and radio stations for information about any unusual black rocks seen to have fallen from the sky.