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The icy plains of Antarctica are a magnet for meteorite hunters such as Maria Valdes, a research scientist at the Field Museum of Natural History and the University of Chicago. Some 1,000 space rocks are found in the region each year. Their dark hue is easy to spot in the white expanse.
"Antarctica, a desert of ice, provides an ideal background for meteorite recovery — go to the right place, and any rock you find must have fallen from the sky," said Valdes, who visited the region as part of an expedition team in late 2022 and early 2023 for her work at the museum's Robert A. Pritzker Center for Meteoritics and Polar Studies. The international team found five meteorites.
Formed from extraterrestrial bodies such as the moon, Mars or large asteroids, each meteorite tells a unique tale about the solar system and how it was formed. But the climate crisis threatens this trove of scientific information, according to a new study. Meteorites are disappearing into the ice, putting them out of the reach of scientists.
As Earth warms, about 5,000 meteorites could disappear from the surface of melting ice sheets every year, according to the study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
📸: José Jorquera (Antarctica.cl)/University of Santiago; Chile
