Murchison meteorite

Murchison meteorite
A Murchison meteorite specimen at the National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C.
Type	Chondrite
Class	Carbonaceous chondrite
Group	CM2
Composition	22.13% total iron, 12% water
Shock stage	S1–2
Country	Australia
Region	Victoria
Coordinates	36°37′S 145°12′E / 36.617°S 145.200°E / -36.617; 145.200[1]
Observed fall	Yes
Fall date	28 September 1969
TKW	100 kg (220 lb)
Pair of grains from the Murchison meteorite
Related media on Wikimedia Commons

The Murchison meteorite is a meteorite that fell in Australia in 1969 near Murchison, Victoria. It belongs to the carbonaceous chondrite class, a group of meteorites rich in organic compounds. Due to its mass (over 100 kg or 220 lb) and the fact that it was an observed fall, the Murchison meteorite is one of the most studied of all meteorites.^[2]

In January 2020, cosmochemists reported that the oldest material found on Earth to date are the silicon carbide particles from the Murchison meteorite, which have been determined to be 7 billion years old, about 2.5 billion years older than the 4.54-billion-year age of the Earth and the Solar System.^[a] The published study noted that "dust lifetime estimates mainly rely on sophisticated theoretical models. These models, however, focus on the more common small dust grains and are based on assumptions with large uncertainties."^[3]

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