Tagish Lake (meteorite)

The meteorite Tagish Lake occurred in the early morning hours of 18 January 2000, the Earth's atmosphere and pulled away as a bright fireball over Canada before he finally slammed into the frozen Tagish Lake.

The fireball reached a brightness of -22 mag. The analysis of satellite imagery revealed that the original meteoroid had a mass of 200 to 250 tons and a diameter of 4 to 7 meters. Thus, the Tagish Lake meteorite was the largest ever observed meteorite fall in Canada. The inlet velocity was estimated to be 15-16 km / s. Its origin is probably in the asteroid belt.

The hundreds found, totaling several kilograms heavy and well-preserved fragments have high proportions of carbon, sulfur and nitrogen and are similar in composition to a comet nucleus. In addition, they contain exceptionally many so-called nanodiamonds, which may have arisen prior to the formation of the solar system in the explosion of a supernova. However, there were no amino acids, which are considered as the building blocks of life on Earth.

The Tagish Lake meteorite is classified as CI meteorite from the group of carbonaceous chondrites. These are primitive carbonaceous meteorites. The age of the meteorite is estimated at 4.5 billion years. It is thus a testimony from the early days of our solar system.