Warmer temperatures threaten relics of the solar system in Antarctica, a new study shows.
Antarctica holds a treasure trove of meteorites. Why are they disappearing?Theo NicitopoulosNearly 50,000 meteorites have been found in Antarctica and hundreds of thousands more could be recoverable. Each one tells a story of the solar system’s evolution—the first lunar rock found on the icy continent showed that material from celestial objects larger than asteroids could end up on Earth.
“This is a bit of an unexpected impact of climate change,” says co-lead author Harry Zekollari, a glaciologist at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. “These places are below freezing, yet we are still profoundly affecting a very important archive of the solar system.”Currently, scientists find about 1,000 meteorites in Antarctica every year. But changing weather conditions may hide thousands more beneath the ice.
“It’s very difficult to develop methods to find these meteorites,” says co-lead author Veronica Tollenaar, a glaciologist at the Université libre de Bruxelles. “That’s why we speak of meteorites being unrecoverable.”, the team’s computer simulations showed that about one-third of visible meteorites will sink under the ice before the end of this century. This translates to a total loss of between 80,000 and 250,000 meteorites.
Meteorites also provide information about other processes that may have taken place early on; for example, whether Jupiter’s immense gravity prevented materials from different regions of the solar system from mixing together.
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