Why is Antarctica such an important place to look for meteorites?
Every year, something like 30,000 – 40,000 metric tons of meteorites fall to Earth. The majority of them burn up in the atmosphere; only the larger pieces make it through, and they accumulate equally all over the Earth’s surface. However there are advantages to looking for them in Antarctica. Firstly, you can find them more easily due to the colour difference between the clear ice and snow and the dark-coloured meteorites. There’s also a process by which meteorites are collected in the ice, particularly in blue ice fields. These blue ice fields are pushed against obstacles such as nunataks as the ice migrates, and then the katabatic winds erode the upper layers of the ice and the meteorites become exposed. The major benefit of the Antarctic meteorites is that they are extremely well-preserved. The time a meteorite has been on Earth ranges from very recent to a couple of hundreds of thousands to as much as two million years. Most meteorites weather quickly under the oxidizing environmen
