Ghazal Dear,
You might have already forgotten how scepticial you were about the existence of “Stjaernfallen” or meteorites 3 years ago. But when we were spotting some of them from Persides meteor shower later in August, you agreed that at least it was a great event and that it was worth to spent half of the night out under the sky. And now scientists found out that some of the meteorites that don’t burn completely in the atmosphere, but reach the earth surface, might serve as informative messengers from extreterrestrial planets and tell us something about how habitable the living conditions might be there.

Microscopic picture of the crystaline structure of a mineral from a meteorite supposed to be of Mars origin.

The meteorites that we can see regularily on the night sky, with the highest incidence in August (Perseides) and in November (Leonides) not only gives us the chance to express our deepest wishes, but as researcher from Michigan State University recently discovered also contain mineral and chemical signatures that can signify habitable conditions on the planet from which they originate, such as the presence of water. But they also mentioned that “the trouble is by the time most of these meteorites have been lying around on Earth they pick up signatures that look just like habitable environments, because they are. Earth, obviously, is habitable.

Earth, I am quite sure, is the the most beautiful and exciting of all habitable planets, in particular taking into consideration its 8 billion different people, some of them funny, some silly, some stupid and some brilliant.

Greetings, Michael