Meteorites: the search for the origins of life
By Monica Grady
Halley's Comet as it appeared in February 1986, Anglo-Australian Observatory/Royal Observatory.
The study of meteorites is helping us understand the processes and materials that shaped the Earth and the solar system. Recent space missions, and the analysis of meteorites from the Moon, Mars and the asteroid belt, have led scientists to question the possible evolution of life on other planets. How is a meteorite formed, where do they come from and how do they arrive on Earth?
Monica Grady, Professor of Planetary and Space Science at the Open University and former head of the petrology and meteoritics division in the Department of Mineralogy at the Natural History Museum, discusses these questions and more.
Meteorites: the search for the origins of life PDF (152.2 KB)
Last year nearly 100,000 specimens were loaned to scientific institutions and researchers worldwide.