Brook's careful handling will allow scientists to study matter that is virtually unchanged since the solar system formed some 4.6 billion years ago, said Peter G. Brown of the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada. Brook collected about two pounds of specimens. Expeditions in later months gathered some 410 additional fragments. But by then the material was beginning to weather away. The material is about the consistency of dried mud.
Rain can cause it to crumble and wash away.
Preliminary tests of the pristine material find that it is loaded with organic molecules of the type that some experts have suggested could have been the original raw materials for the formation of life on Earth. It is natural to assume that not only could organic molecules have been synthesized in the primordial soup on Earth, but they could have been brought here from an extraterrestrial origin. The meteorite's fireball was detected by satellites, enabling Brown and other others to estimate the path of the space rock and backtrack it into space. They believe the object came from the asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Brown said the object was probably jolted off a larger body and could have spent millions of years in orbit before being captured by Earth's gravity.