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During the eve of the take-off of the Apollo 11 mission, the one that would take humans to the moon for the first time, we received a visit from outer space that would open our eyes in regards to the world that lies beyond earth .
On February 8, 1969, at 1:05 A.M. , in the small town in Allende , in the state of Chihuahua , an intense light sailed through the sky, followed by a deafening roar. The event was recorded from the U.S. border , according to Karina Cervantes , a petrology and geochemistry researcher from the UNAM .
The meteorite was a carbonaceous chondrite , an object older than the sun . It arrived as a clue from the universe for scientists from all over the world to venture into hypotheses about outer space. Fernando Ortega , a researcher from the UNAM's Geology Institute , says he calls it “God's stone” and explains that this was an element that fell from the sky to help us understand our origins , from the time we were stardust and until we became human beings.
That same year, humanity was awaiting the mission that would finally take humans to the moon . Scientists and laboratories around the world were ready to receive and study lunar samples that the mission would bring back, therefore, the Allende meteorite literally became a gift that fell from the sky, becoming the most studied space rock in history.
Tons of knowledge
On February 1969 , Mexican hands could feel with their own hands, without any space suit , some of the oldest geological elements in the solar system . Officially, UNAM researchers collected two tons of the meteorite . It was an intense labor that lasted over 25 years , many times they paid small amounts to the inhabitants and the curious for them to hand over their meteorite fragments . But, extra-officially and at the hands of smugglers, Dr. Cervantes calculates that it could have been up to 5 tons, out of which only 200 kilograms officially belong to Mexico , registered in the UNAM and in some other research centers or exhibited in museums .
What Allende taught us
Before Allende , the temporality and timeline of the events that originated out planet were still unknown. Thanks to the presence of isotopes such as oxygen-16, magnesium-26 , and silver-107 , we discovered that the earth was born in a moment and place close to the birth of the milky way , thanks to events such as the explosion of stars and supernovas .
In addition, the titan that fell from the sky gave some clues about how do nebulae form, from which planets then form and also about the most primitive organic matter , a precursor of life, with the finding of organic components such as fullerene and amino acids that, for the first time, were found in a meteorite .
Nevertheless, the most important contribution made by this Mexican meteorite was its incrustations rich on calcium and aluminum , the oldest solid objects known, as they might have been the first to precipitate from the nebulae that gave birth to the solar system ; that is, before the sun existed, around 4,570 million years, the elements found in Allende already existed. In total, the millenary stone contains over 100 minerals but 20 of them were, before its apparition, unknown for humans.
Scientists
from all over the world started publishing articles about Allende days after its apparition, thanks to its extraordinary scientific value of the meteorite . Until 2018, there were around 16,000 publications about Allende in prestigious science magazines and in that same year, they found between 5 to 20 new minerals for science. In January 2019, at least 50 articles about Allende were published.
Where is Allende?
Allende is all over the world. Dr. Ortega explains that two days after the meteorite fell, a trader took 500 kilograms; the NASA took around 1,000 kilograms, and the rest was kept by traders and aficionados in private collections and it's dispersed among chemical , astrochemistry , and cosmochemistry laboratories around the world.
The group of countries who were ready to receive lunar rocks was the first to receive samples from Allende , nowadays, there are 60,000 fragments of this meteorite in collections around the world. Dr. Cervantes explains that a dozen kilos of the rock were ground to distribute it among laboratories around the world. “Therefore, all the laboratories and all the universities where they study rocks have a little bit of Allende .”
The Smithsonian, in Washington D.C. , is the institution with the highest number of fragments from the meteorite . The scientist , who made a postdoctoral stay at the Antarctic meteorite laboratories and in the Lunar Samples laboratory at the NASA , explains that the dust from Allende is used as a reference for every analytic technique, setting a standard of excellence in science worldwide.
The mysterious box
Dr. Karina
says that Gerardo Sánchez Rubio , a UNAM professor , was sent to the site where the famous meteorite fell to collaborate with researchers from the U.S. who were taking samples to send them to laboratories in the U.S., nevertheless, he carried out a heroic task and managed to send one of the boxes to Mexico City, without the U.S. researchers noticing, although the official version says the Smithsonian donated the material to the UNAM but the story doesn't end there.
Dr. Ortega
said that once he became the head of the geology department , he received a huge surprise: an abandoned box was kept at Mexico's postal service for 50 years, which had never been claimed, therefore, they took it to his office after finding the address on the package.
He was shocked when he found 150 kilograms of Allende inside the box . The finding was protected for decades as a result of ignorance, as every gram of Allende , says the geologist, has propitiated at least 170 scientific contributions and retails for USD $1,000 . Therefore, the mysterious package contained at least USD $15 million and an invaluable amount of scientific elements.
Translated by Gretel Morales
