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Science Quickly

Meteorite Contains Material Older Than Earth

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.31.4K Ratings

🗓️ 13 January 2020

⏱️ 3 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Murchison meteorite, which screamed to Earth 50 years ago, carried with it stardust that's seven billion years old. Christopher Intagliata reports. 

Transcript

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0:00.0

It doesn't matter how neatly you pack them away.

0:03.0

Christmas lights will always be tangled.

0:06.0

And a Christmas light tangle is more than a tangle.

0:09.0

It's a tangle that somehow gets more entangled

0:11.0

the more you attempt to untangle it. So to the loft I go with just

0:15.6

my Christmasy coffee for company and if I'm not back by New Year Merry Christmas.

0:21.5

Our sticky toffee latte is now at Costa. That's Christmas. Tofy L'Ote is now at Costa.

0:24.0

That's Christmas,

0:25.0

that Costa coffee a little better. This is

0:37.0

This is Scientific American's 60 Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagata.

0:39.0

Sunday morning, September 28, 1969, a fireball lit up the skies north of Melbourne, Australia.

0:46.5

And people were getting ready to go to church and then they heard this loud Sonic boom.

0:51.7

Some of them saw the bright fireball in broad daylight and

0:55.4

people were surprised. They was what's going on especially those who are not

0:58.8

outside they realized is there an airplane that came down? It sounded really dramatic.

1:03.4

And then suddenly shortly after that there was a smell that was detectable over the whole area.

1:08.8

People describe it as metallated spirits of strong organic smell.

1:13.6

Cosmo Chemist Philip Heck of Chicago's field museum describing the spectacular

1:18.0

arrival of what's now known as the Murchison meteorite, named for the village

1:21.8

where it was found.

1:23.0

A portion of the space debris now resides at the Field Museum,

1:26.0

and Heck says it's our best source of pre-solar stardust,

...

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