Ancient rock star finds a home at the U.Alberta (Forwarded)

Office of Public Affairs
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

April 24, 2006

Ancient rock star finds a home at the U of A
By Ileiren Byles, ExpressNews Staff

The University of Alberta is welcoming a very, very old rock star into
its hallways. No, it's not Keith Richards. It is, perhaps, the most
important rock on the face of the Earth.

The Tagish Lake meteorite is the only one of its kind known to exist on
Earth, and may contain insights into the beginnings of our solar system,
said Dr. Christopher Herd, a professor in the U of A Department of Earth
and Atmospheric Sciences. Because the space-born rock fell on the frozen
surface of a northern B.C. lake in the middle of January and was
collected without being touched by human hands, it represents the most
pristine sample of minerals from outer space.

"No other meteorite's ever been collected in this manner and I suppose
that arguably makes it the most important rock that's ever been found
anywhere on the Earth," said Herd. "It can tell us new information about
the birth and evolution of our solar system, and the very fact that it's
been kept frozen, essentially pristine, uncontaminated by human hands,
gives us an unprecedented opportunity to explore new scientific avenues
that were heretofore impossible. We can do things with this meteorite
that nobody's ever done before."

The Tagish Lake meteorite is being carefully stored in sub-zero
conditions in the U of A's meteorite collection and has never been in
temperatures above freezing. It was formed in space, protected from the
heat of re-entry by a crust of minerals, and landed during a northern
Canadian winter.

"What that means is that we can look for minerals in there that are not
normally preserved under normal circumstances, where they're collected
above freezing," said Herd. "It has actually been reported that for some
of these meteorites, when they're warmed up, you actually can smell kind
of sulphurous smells or metallic smells as the volatile components are
kind of de-gassing. So, it gives us an opportunity to look at this when
those volatile components are still there. It even provides us the
opportunity to look for extraterrestrial ices. I mean, who knows whether
they're there, but we can look because of the way this thing's been
collected."

The other thing that makes this meteorite so special is its composition.
It's an extremely rare type of formation that has preserved the
goings-on of more than 4.57 billion years ago. Of all the meteorites
that fall to Earth, only two or three per cent are of the same category
as the Tagish Lake stone, said Herd.

"The meteorite is a carbonaceous chondrite, which is quite a rare type
of meteorite. These meteorites represent the left-over material from the
formation of the solar system," he said. "This is in the broader context
for the theories that we have for the formation of the solar system,
which is that the planets formed from a rotating disk of dust and gas
around the early sun. So, this material is left over from that. It's
basically a sampling of the dust and gas that were present in that disk
before the planets started to form."

The meteorite came to the U of A through a partnership between the
university, Canadian Heritage, the Royal Ontario Museum, Natural
Resources Canada and the Canadian Space Agency.

"We are also very fortunate to have a group of very passionate and
dedicated scientists who have worked on this project for many years to
ensure that it comes to this institution as well as the others," said
Janine Andrews, executive director of the University of Alberta
Department of Museums and Collections Services.

For Herd, this is the something he's been waiting a long time for.

"Shortly after I started here three years ago, I thought this would be a
great meteorite to have because of its scientific value. It also fell in
Canadian territory. It's a Canadian meteorite and it really needed to be
in a Canadian institution in order to maximize the science and to
demonstrate that we could do great science on this," he said.

"So, it means a lot. I'm not going to do everything; I can't do
everything on this. It will be a matter of setting up a research
consortium with other researchers across Canada, with input from
researchers around the world, who are all eager to work on this as well
-- to really tease out as much as we can about the formation of the
solar system."

Related Internal Links

* University of Alberta’s Meteorite Collection
http://www.museums.ualberta.ca/dig/n...ite/index.html
* University of Alberta’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
http://easweb.eas.ualberta.ca/
* University of Alberta Museums
http://www.museums.ualberta.ca/

Related External Links

* Royal Ontario Museum
http://www.rom.on.ca/
* Canadian Space Agency
http://www.space.gc.ca/asc/eng/default.asp
* The Department of Canadian Heritage
http://www.pch.gc.ca/index_e.cfm
* Natural Resources Canada
http://www.nrcan-rncan.gc.ca/inter/index.html