This is the first time an opal has been found in an asteroid. Traces of opal were found from a meteorite that made impact on Antarctica may point towards the origin of Earth's water.
An opal can absorb water ranging from 6 up to 30 percent, hydrating itself in form of silica. Its presence on a meteorite indicates that there is a highly probability of other meteorites and asteroids carrying significant amounts of water in the form of ice.
According to Professor Hilary Downes from the Birkbeck Institute of Earth and Planetary Science from University of London believes that asteroids "may have brought the water to the earth and helped it become the world teeming with life that we live in today."
The meteorite was classified as EET 83309 and believed to come from the surface of an asteroid.
Both asteroids and meteoroids orbit around the sun. However, asteroids behave much like minor planets since they orbit around the sun. While meteoroids are smaller objects and they enter earth's atmosphere -- combust, evaporate and become meteorites.
Based on the found evidence, it seems that EET 83309 was still part of its parent asteroid as it was exposed to the sun's radiation. According to Professor Downes, the found pieces of opals are either broken fragment, or they are replacing other minerals.
This means that the previous impacts on the parent asteroid by objects from different parts of the solar system were the events that brought water ice to its surface in the first place. Isotope analysis on the meteorite's pieces has shown that the minerals do share the same extra-terrestrial origin.
Source: NAM2016 Pulse Headlines
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