They Came From Outer Space. Now, They’re Going Into Hiding.
Rising temperatures in Antarctica are making meteorites sink out of view before researchers can collect them.
If you’re looking for meteorites, here’s a tip: Go south. All the way south. And do it soon.
In some parts of Antarctica, there’s a good chance that what looks like a regular old rock could actually be a chunk of an asteroid, the moon, or even Mars. Roughly 60 percent of all known meteorites have been collected there.
But scientific sleuthing for such extraterrestrial material, which can shed light on how the solar system formed billions of years ago, will probably get more difficult in Antarctica in the coming decades. That’s because, as temperatures rise, thousands of meteorites will sink into the continent’s ice and disappear from sight every year, according to a new study published on Monday.
Antarctica’s meteorite largess isn’t because more extraterrestrial stuff is falling there, Cari Corrigan, a geologist at the Smithsonian Institution and a curator of the National Museum of Natural History’s meteorite collection, said.
Rather, meteorites simply tend to be more visible on the Antarctic ice sheet than they would be, say, in your backyard. “Your eye can pick out a dark rock on a white surface super easily,” said Dr. Corrigan, who was not involved in the new research.
The continent also has places known as blue-ice areas, that are particularly good for finding meteorites. These regions are often near geographic obstructions like mountains, where layers of ice tend to pile up and strong winds continuously erode the surface. Those conditions are ideal for concentrating, and revealing, meteorites that have fallen over millenniums.
But warming temperatures could send many meteorites out of sight. In recent years, researchers have spotted specimens in Antarctica that have been partially encrusted in ice rather than sitting exposed on the surface.
The meteorites, most of which have dark surfaces, are heating up more and melting the ice underneath them, said Veronica Tollenaar, one of the lead authors of the paper, which was published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
