When meteorites crash land in Antarctica, they stick out like a black blob against a pure white backdrop. This is the reason why over 60 percent of discovered meteorites have been found on the frozen continent. However, warming temperatures could soon spell the end of this golden era of meteorite-hunting in the South Pole.
Antarctica is becoming warmer and warmer in the face of climate change, turning more of its once-solid ice surface into a softer slush. Meteorites and other rocky objects tend to sink faster on softer ice, narrowing the window of time when researchers can stumble across them.
New research has looked into this problem and found that up to 5,000 meteorites are currently lost each year due to thawing ice.
It’s estimated that 300,000 to 850,000 meteorites are lying on the Antarctica ice sheets, waiting to be found. As in Antarctica, an increasing number of them are likely to plummet into obscurity.
Under current policies, set to cause warming of 2.6 to 2.7°C (4.68 to 4.86°F) above pre-industrial levels, around 30 percent of the meteorites in could become inaccessible. If emissions increase further, that figure could be as high as 75 percent.
This potential drop in discoveries could have a notable impact on our understanding of the Solar System and beyond.
Most meteorites originate from different moons, planets, and asteroids in our Solar System. When they’re deposited on Earth, they provide scientists with an invaluable that would otherwise prove to get our hands on.
Sometimes, they can even tell us something about the universe beyond our Solar System. Just last month, scientists detailed a meteorite found in Antarctica that contained a . The exceptionally high isotopic ratio of the meteorite suggests it was formed by an unusual hydrogen-burning supernova, providing an insight into ancient cosmic events beyond our Solar System.
If we continue to lose meteorites, we risk losing heaps of hard evidence that can tell us about our position in the universe. Given this risk, Kevin Righter, a curator of Antarctic meteorites and planetary scientist at NASA Johnson Space Center, explains in an that we should seriously think about ramping up efforts to collect meteorite samples before it’s too late.
“If meteorites are not collected quickly enough, they will be a lost resource for present and future planetary science, which would constitute a major setback to our fundamental understanding of not only Earth’s place in the inner Solar System, but of the origin and evolution of the inner Solar System planets and asteroids, potential impactors, and the origin of organics and other components that allow life to flourish on Earth,” explains Righter.
The study is published in the journal .