January
07
/ 2016
A meteorite that is older than Earth itself was recovered from Kati Thanda – Lake Eyre in South Australia, just hours before heavy rains would have washed away all trace of it. The retrieval of the estimated 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite, which fell to Earth last November from an orbit between Mars and Jupiter, has been described as like finding a needle in a haystack. Kati Thanda – Lake Eyre is normally dry, but is now being filled by heavy rains, a rare event that occurs just several times each century. A press release from Curtin University reports that the 1.7 kg (3.7 lb) meteorite made from material created during the early formation of the solar system, plunged to Earth on
