Glasgow University: Woman who found Winchcombe meteorite tells of discovery

After a six second fireball raced through the sky above Britain on February 28 this year, a global effort went into narrowing down the exact landing area for fragments of meteorite it shot into the sky.

Data from a network of cameras across the UK and Europe was analysed in Australia to narrow the search area.

But alongside the scientific expertise used to trace what would become known as the Winchcombe Meteorite, it was a layperson who made the incredibly precious find.

Mira Ihasz is the partner of Glasgow University planetary geoscientist Luke Daly and was thrilled to have the chance to travel to Gloucestershire to join the search.

"Luke is always talking about the camera network and he was always crossing the country setting up cameras on people's rooftops.

"For years I was thinking, 'One day we will have a meteorite and when that day comes I will make sure I am there and go out and hunt'."

The search was lead by Luke, who helped set up the UK Fireball Alliance, a sky-camera network which caught sight of the meteorite when it blasted through the earth’s upper atmosphere, and PhD student Aine O’Brien.

Glasgow University researcher Luke Daly with partner Mire Ihasz and scientist Aine O'Brien hold meteorites from the Hunterian Museum Picture: Gordon Terris

Luke had lived in Australia for several years and was part of the Desert Fireball Network in the Australian outback.

On his return to the UK he wanted to be involved in a similar project to try and track meteorites by imaging the night sky.

Around one meteorite a year lands on UK soil but the last found was 30 years ago.

Luke said: "Not many folk were looking up over the past 30 years so it was pure luck before when one was found and now we're trying to create our own luck.

"It turns out there are loads of people out there interested in looking at meteors in the UK.

"So we got together and said, 'More data is better, we're all trying to do the same thing, let's work together for the same aim,'

"We were making sure we could share our data really quickly and that's essentially what allowed the Winchcombe meteorite recovery to happen so quickly because all the cameras from all the networks saw it.

"We knew it had dropped rocks within six hours and we knew where they were within a three kilometre box within three days."

Finding the meteorite quickly was vital as the rocks are quickly contaminated by the earth's environment - but there was a slight delay.

The Australian scientist who was the only person who could understand the scientific modelling to track the meteorite was enjoying a local bank holiday windsurfing.

But finally they had their location in the Cotswolds and a team of around 20 scientists set off to scour fields for small pieces of rock.

Glasgow University researcher Luke Daly with partner Mire Ihasz hold meteorites from the Hunterian Picture: Gordon Terris

A television appeal led to one family realising a charcoal coloured splatter on their driveway had travelled across the solar system to crash land outside their house.

But the team knew there were more pieces to be uncovered.

Aine said: "It felt like a movie of the fireball alliance - all these different networks coming together, combining their data.

"There were five fragments in total. Four were found by members of the public on their own land after seeing people like Luke on the news saying looking out for a bit of black rock.

"The first piece was the piece on the driveway that got splatted and even made a little dent, which is amazing, a tiny little crater about five centimetres deep.

"We spent five or six days going up and down fields and knocking on doors and very politely asking a lot of very posh people - because it's very wealthy in the Gloucestershire countryside - you may have seen on the news there's been a fireball, you've got a lovely big field, we'd like to search it.

"Meteorites are shiny black rocks and just look like poo. We spent all week thinking we had found it and then it turning out to be just poo - sheep poo, rabbit poo, deer poo, all the British animals have meteorite-sized poo.

"So we spent a lot of time on meteor-wrongs."

Mira, originally from Hungary, was quietly confident she would be the one to spot the meteor-right. Before setting out on the search her mum had told her she felt she would be successfu.

She said: "I was hoping they didn't find it so that on the day I arrived, the Saturday, we could find it together.

"We went out to a field full of sheep poos. I really felt after an hour so embarrassed not being a scientist and not knowing what is a meteorite because it is completely different from being in a museum with the spotlight where it glitters.

"I was focusing so hard, going everywhere, turning over every single blade of glass."

A picture of the meteorite in a field in Gloucestershire where Glasgow University researchers Luke Daly, left, and Aine O'Brien with Mire Ihasz helped find the first space rock on Uk soil for 30 years. STY..Pic Gordon Terris Herald & Times..28/5/21.

Mira started to feel embarrassed, as the only non-scientist, to be constantly asking the others to double-check what she had spotted.

But then she struck lucky.

She said: "I was behind everyone and I was telling myself to catch up with the others but I saw something and I wasn't sure.

"When Luke arrived and said 'This is it' I had a complete blackout. I was not believing him. You're asking a scientist 'Are you sure this is what you are studying for 10 years?'

"Everybody was just celebrating and jumping. It was such a moment. I think when you win the Lottery you are probably not as enthusiastic.

"My heart was beating like crazy. I could not believe it. It was once in a lifetime.

"And once you see it you realise it is nothing like a poo really."

One of the residents who had seen the search left the team a bottle of whisky and glasses to celebrate, a much appreciated gesture given hugs and high fives were off the cards for covid reasons.

The law states that rocks belong to the land owner but, fortunately, five were donated to the Natural History Museum and work immediately began to study to the meteorite and find out what answers it might give to some of life's huge questions.

An iron meteorite from Arizona currently at the Hunterian . STY..Pic Gordon Terris Herald & Times..28/5/21.

The rock is one of the rarest - a carbonaceous chondrite, an ancient structure holding the building blocks of planets.

Pieces of it are now being sold on the black market for thousands of pounds but for the scientists, it is priceless.

Fortunately, following its journey across the solar system, the section of rock found by Mira landed in mud, which helped to protect it.

Aine has been studying the rock. She said: "The pieces I get are half a gram, so tiny little chips at a time. I have to put them in to a little pestle and mortar.

"I am quite a clumsy person and this is ultra precious rock so when I'm in the lab it is so so scary - you breath and this stuff is basically dust."

Winchcombe is an incredible find because, unlike the other 60,000 meteorites worldwide, it is possible to trace its parent asteroid and know where it came from.

It formed before there were planets in our solar system and contains the dust and gas from when there was only the sun and a disc around it.

Luke said: "NASA and the Japanese space agency have spent billions of dollars sending probes to asteroids to bring back 5g from water rich asteroids and we got 500g in a field.

"All the minerals inside it were formed in the first few millions years of our solar system's history, basically it's got all the building blocks you would ever want to seed a planet to jump start the origin of life.

"Studying meteorites like Winchombe, the fact we got it so fast means there's going to be stuff we don't usually see in other meteorites of this type, which is really exciting.

A pallasite meteorite from Hunterian Museum Picture: Gordon Terris

"So we're just talking about small questions like origin of the solar system, origin of water, origin of life - just the trivial stuff in this wee little rock that Mira found in a field hopefully will bring us some answers."

Aine says the meteorite's discovery feels like a mirror to the pandemic, a global scientific effort that needed the support of ordinary people.

During lockdown, residents might have been hostile to having visitors arrive from other parts of the UK but the team was welcomed.

She said: "People in France had cameras, people in Holland had cameras, people in Australia were doing the maths. It's similar to what the covid effort is.

"When people donated the meteorite one of the things they said was, 'We want to do this because we're so grateful to what scientists have achieved and given to us with developing the vaccine.'

"They were just so grateful, this couple, for everything scientists had done.

"It just feels like this really special thing, this lockdown meteorite. Socially, culturally, the fact it was a citizen science effort and people got excited about it in a way they might not have before the pandemic.

"It felt like a bit of a cultural phenomenon."

A piece of the Winchcombe meteorite is now on display in the Natural History Museum and will be displayed in the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow University.