Held meteroite recovered from Winchcombe CREDIT Trustees of the Natural History Museum
One small piece of rock, but a giant discovery for scientists. This is one of the first pieces of meteorite to be discovered in the UK for three decades.
"This is a once in a lifetime experience really for us," says Ashley King from the Natural History Museum.
"So, it's incredibly rare for meteorites to actually be witnessed coming down, landing on the earth, and being recovered."
The rocks that have been found are so rare, they're a type of meteorite never before seen in the UK.
"This is what we call a carbonaceous chondrite meteorite, and so that means it comes from the birth of our solar system," explains King.
"So, this rock is 4.6 billion years old, and it contains all the ingredients that were there when our solar system was forming, that went into making asteroids, went into making comets, and ultimately. Went into making planets like the Earth."
When a fireball meteor was seen shooting through the night sky, scientists dared to dream that small pieces of it may have landed.
They asked people to search in an area just north of the English town of Cheltenham and began getting calls from the town of Winchcombe.
Sure enough, the rocks people were finding here were meteorites.
Scientists began searching the local area, that search led them here, to Lachland Bond's parents' farm.
"So, we actually found out via the scientists coming to our door, knocking and saying that there had been a potential meteorite falling on our land and if they could have a little look," explains Bond.
Within an hour, they found something.
"If it gives us a little bit of a glimpse into history, then that will be a wonderful thing to be able to say that it happened on our land," says Bond.
The last time a meteorite was discovered in the UK was back in 1991.
People in Winchcombe sense history has been made here.
"From our point of view, it's exciting, people have actually had a purpose to go out and walk at the moment, not they didn't have a purpose already, but they certainly now have a purpose to go out and walk," says one resident.
"This is exciting news. Yeah, it is, yes. Puts Winchcombe on the map for yet another reason," says another.
Catching you up on what you need to know on April 26, 2022, with Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter for $44 billion, Russia warning of a possible threat of World War III, the FDA approving a COVID treatment for children under 12, and more.
Plastic pollution is a problem that experts say is only getting worse. One organization is looking to change that. Activists want to save the beauty of our oceans, with the beauty of art. Brad Parks, conservation education director of the Washed Ashore project, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
The federal mask mandate for planes and other public transportation has been grounded. A federal judge in Florida struck down the nationwide requirement saying it exceeds health officials' authority. Dr. Sampson Davis, emergency medicine physician, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
UPSIDE foods, a company that makes cultivated meat products, recently raised $400 million in a Series C round.
UPSIDE says it's developing a way to grow real meat, poultry, and seafood, without the need to raise animals for human consumption. It's a process that gets the attention of some big-name backers, including Bill Gates and Richard Branson. Dr. Uma Valeti, Founder and CEO of UPSIDE Foods, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Catching you up on what you need to know on April 25, 2022, with Secretary of State Blinken and Defense Secretary Austin visiting Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron is reelected as president of France, Twitter is talking to Elon Musk about his purchase bid, and more.
An increasing number of countries are recognizing "Rights of Nature", a legal movement that says ecosystems and species have basic rights to exist and flourish. Grant Wilson, executive director at Earth Law Center joins Cheddar News to explain what the movement is aiming to achieve.
Removing carbon from our atmosphere has become a goal for scientists and entrepreneurs around the world, and while many have begun to develop promising technology solutions, a few big names in tech, including Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, Meta and McKinsey, are committing nearly $1 billion dollars to fund carbon removal technology through 2030 through a new initiative called Frontier, an advanced market commitment to incentive following through on development. Hannah Bebbington, the head of strategy for Frontier, joined Cheddar News to discuss. "What Frontier aims to do is help get this market on track by sending that strong demand signal such that we can scale up capacity really significantly in the next couple of years," she said.
Autumn Peltier, an indigenous water activist, joined Cheddar News to talk about the lack of access to clean water among indigenous communities in Canada. “I say the government to hold themselves accountable for the promises that they make because Canada and indigenous people have a long history of broken promises and they still continue to this day to keep breaking promises with the nation's people," she said. "Less talk and more action is very much expected from me."
Jonah Goldman, the managing director at Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy, joined Cheddar News to talk about the promising growth in the climate change-conscious investments the organization has made over the years. ”I mean when we're looking at some of the hard to abate technologies and cement and steel and aviation fuel, all of those have promising pathways that weren't there again just a few years ago," he said. "We invest across all of the technology areas that are driving emissions, greenhouse gas emissions and there really are exciting products and technologies coming out in almost every one of those sectors.”
Robert Bonnie, farm production and conservation undersecretary for the USDA, spoke to Cheddar about climate-smart strategies to help farmers reduce carbon emissions from agriculture. "We share the costs of installing those practices on their lands in ways that will protect the climate and maintain agricultural productivity, and we're also partnering with farmers to draw in private investment in greenhouse gas emissions reductions provided by agriculture and forestry," he said. The hope is to get farmers and ranchers to produce climate-smart commodities to lessen the impact of climate change.
