Meteorite found in Assam hides secrets of the origin of life on Earth

Seven years after it survived a fiery entry through Earth's thick atmosphere and crashed near Kamargaon town in the Golaghat district of Assam

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Seven years after it survived a fiery entry through Earth’s thick atmosphere and crashed near Kamargaon town in the Golaghat district of Assam, the piece of space rock is on the verge of unraveling a big secret — the origin of life on Earth. Astronomers the world over have been interested in understanding how life began on the planet. The chemical composition hints that it all began in the core of stars and stardust, India Today reported.

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur have found evidence of vesicles in minerals for the first time in any chondrite meteorite from the outer solar system and may find new clues about the origin of life. They are joined by researchers from Hiroshima University, Japan, and Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad in the study, said India Today report.

The meteorite found in Assam comes from the asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter. The space rock broke down from another source following a collision with an asteroid at a high velocity. This collision resulted in the breaking of the asteroid into small pieces. A few of these asteroid pieces fell on the Earth’s surface as the Kamargaon meteorite. The Kamargaon meteorite came from an asteroid over 6.4 kilometers in size.

The findings of the study have been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets, which states that it is the first occurrence of vesicular olivine and pyroxene in an ordinary chondrite. “Impact events on the surface of planets and asteroids are one of the most fundamental processes responsible for the formation and evolution of the celestial bodies in the solar system,” researchers said in the paper.

It is to be noted that shocked meteorites are extraterrestrial rocks that experience transient high-pressure and high-temperature conditions caused by planetary collisions in outer space and contain abundant fractures subsequently filled with frictional melt known as shock veins.

“Our prime interest is to know how the planet Earth was formed. This study provides evidence of volatile elements, for example sulfur, sodium, manganese, and iron in the Kamargaon meteorite, which are crucial elements for the origin of life,” explains Sujoy Ghosh of the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, told indiatoday.in.

Previous studies have revealed that volatile elements like oxygen, carbon, sodium, manganese, and sulfur are crucial elements for life and that understanding the occurrence and distribution of these elements in our solar system is important to decipher the story of our own beginning.

Researchers said that the volatile elements present in rocks become mobile at high temperatures and try to escape the rock. Such types of volatile escape from the rock systems create holes on the surface of the rocks known as vesicles. Therefore, these vesicles can be used as a tool to understand the outgassing mechanisms, quantity, and type of volatiles present in the rocks.

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