Tagish Lake, 18 January 2000: The Meteorite That Fell on Ice
A brilliant fireball over the Yukon and northern British Columbia dropped fragments onto a frozen lake. A local man collected them without thawing them, preserving one of the most primitive and organic-rich meteorites known.
Sources Brown et al., 'The fall, recovery, orbit, and composition of the Tagish Lake meteorite', Science 290 (2000) 320; NASA Goddard feature (2011); Meteoritical Bulletin Database, 'Tagish Lake'; Planetary Science Research Discoveries (2002); Wikipedia
Just before 9 a.m. local time on 18 January 2000, a fireball brighter than the full Moon crossed the Yukon and northern British Columbia and exploded, rattling windows and leaving a dust trail seen for hundreds of kilometres. US military satellites recorded the flash.
Collected frozen
A week later Jim Brook, who lived near Tagish Lake, found dark fragments lying on the lake ice. Knowing they might matter, he picked them up in plastic bags without touching them by hand and kept them frozen. Hundreds more pieces were found when the snow melted, but Brook’s pristine samples became some of the most valuable meteorite material in the world.
Why it matters
Peter Brown and colleagues reported in Science that the fireball came from an orbit reaching the outer asteroid belt and that the rock was a new kind of carbonaceous chondrite, very primitive and rich in carbon. NASA scientists later found that different fragments held different amounts of amino acids and other organics, a record of chemistry on its parent asteroid. Nothing here is mysterious, but it is a good October-style lesson in what to do if a sky rock lands in your yard.
Ledger status
Marked cited. Map position is approximate (town or region level).
Sources
- Brown, P. G., et al. (2000), “The fall, recovery, orbit, and composition of the Tagish Lake meteorite,” Science 290, 320 — ADS
- NASA Goddard, Tagish Lake feature (2011) — nasa.gov
- Planetary Science Research Discoveries, “Tagish Lake” (2002) — psrd.hawaii.edu
- Meteoritical Bulletin Database, “Tagish Lake” — lpi.usra.edu
Part of the World Ledger, batch 1. Original text; no images are used.
Evidence ledger
Each claim in this file, the source it rests on, and how well it holds up: 4 corroborated. What the labels mean.
| Claim | Source | Type · date | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| A fireball on 18 Jan 2000 dropped meteorites onto Tagish Lake in northwestern British Columbia. | Brown et al., Science 290 (2000); Meteoritical Bulletin | scholarly · 2000 | corroborated |
| Fragments were collected from the lake ice without being thawed, preserving fragile organics. | Brown et al. (2000); PSRD (2002) | scholarly · 2000 | corroborated |
| The meteorite is a primitive carbonaceous chondrite unlike any previously known. | Brown et al. (2000); NASA Goddard (2011) | scholarly · 2011 | corroborated |
| The fireball's path and orbit were reconstructed from satellite and eyewitness data. | Brown et al. (2000) | scholarly · 2000 | corroborated |
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