Introduction: The delivery of amino acids to the early Earth by interplanetary dust particles, comets, and carbonaceous meteorites could have been a significant source of the early Earth's prebiotic organic inventory [1]. Amino acids are central to modern terrestrial biochemistry as major components of proteins and enzymes and were probably pivotal in the origin of life. A variety of amino acid...

Meteorites have one of the most unique and beautiful microstructures, Widmanstätten structure. This consists large, elongated bands which form an intricate octahedral lace crystalline metal. structure makes meteorites ideal case to demonstrate capabilities mechanical phase mapping using high?speed nanoindentation. In this work, properties composition Taza meteorite were mapped ~100,000 indentat...

Introduction: The KLE98300 meteorite is an Antarctic meteorite and is classified as an EH3 chondrite [1]. In this meteorite, we found large numbers of graphite grains associated with Fe-Ni metal. Such graphite grains are considered to be products of parent body metamorphism [2, 3]. Isotopic compositions of carbon and nitrogen in graphite and in bulk meteorites give important clues to the parent...

The Tafassasset meteorite which was found the Tenere dessert, Niger, in 2000 and 2001 consists of 26 pieces with a total weight of ~110 kg. The well-preserved meteorite has been studied by several groups [1-4], but until today no consensus on the meteorite's classification was obtained. Reasons for this difficulty are:-texture and mineral abundances vary considerably,-different individual stone...

Sacramento Wash 005 (SaW) 005, Meteorite Hills 00428 (MET) 00428, and Mount Howe 88403 (HOW) 88403 are S-rich Fe,Ni-rich metal meteorites with fine metal structures and homogeneous troilite. We compare them with the H-metal meteorite, Lewis Cliff 88432. Phase diagram analyses suggest that SaW 005, MET 00428, and HOW 88403 were liquids at temperatures above 1350 C. Tridymite in HOW 88403 constra...

GC-MS on the Viking 1976 Mars missions did not detect organic molecules on the Martian surface, even those expected from meteorite bombardment. This result suggested that the Martian regolith might hold a potent oxidant that converts all organic molecules to carbon dioxide rapidly relative to the rate at which they arrive. This conclusion is influencing the design of Mars missions. We reexamine...

The Pontlyfni meteorite fell on Coch-y-Bug Farm, Pontlyfni, Llanwnda, Caernarvonshire, Wales at 11 : 53; April 14, 1931 [1]. Most of the mass is believed to have fallen into the sea, but a 150-g stone was seen to fall on land and was recovered. L.J. Spencer was allowed to examine the stone shortly after its fall, but he could only state that it was a meteori te of an unusual type. The meteorite...

A new meteorite find, named Khatyrka, was recovered from eastern Siberia as a result of a search for naturally occurring quasicrystals. The meteorite occurs as clastic grains within postglacial clay-rich layers along the banks of a small stream in the Koryak Mountains, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of far eastern Russia. Some of the grains are clearly chondritic and contain Type IA porphyritic oliv...

One of the key conditions of the lithopanspermia hypothesis is that microorganisms situated within meteorites could survive hypervelocity entry from space through the Earth's atmosphere. So far, all experimental proof of this possibility has been based on tests with sounding rockets which do not reach the transit velocities of natural meteorites. We explored the survival of the spore-forming th...