Seven years ago a meteorite had crashed near Kamargaon town in the Golaghat district of Assam. Now , the piece of space rock is said to be holding the clue of life and the secret to origin of life on Earth as per based on recent research.
While in this regard there is yet to get a fixed answer from the researchers but the chemical composition of the meteorite gives the hint that the origin of life began in the core of stars and stardust.
According to a study by the Researchers in the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur , they have found evidences 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.
The study of the meteorites has been conducted by researchers in IIT-Kharagpur in collaboration with researchers from Hiroshima University, Japan, and Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad.
As per reports the findings of the study have been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets. The study says that for the first time vesicular olivine and pyroxene were found in an ordinary chondrite.
The meteorite that crashed 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.
It needs to mention 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.
Studies previously 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.
As per further reports , researchers have 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.
