The Tagish Lake meteorite
The account
A fireball lit up the sky of northern Canada and left black stones scattered across a frozen lake.
What investigators found
It is a rare meteorite, rich in carbon and organic molecules, collected frozen and studied as a clue to the origin of life.
The story
On the morning of January 18, 2000, a huge fireball streaked across the sky over the Yukon and northern British Columbia, seen and heard by many people. Days later, a local resident found dark fragments on the ice of Tagish Lake. He collected them without touching them with his hands and kept them frozen, which preserved the material almost intact.
Scientists identified a carbonaceous chondrite, a rare type of meteorite that holds material from the earliest days of the Solar System. The pieces contain organic compounds, including amino acids, and became a reference for studying how the ingredients of life may have reached Earth from space. There is no mystery about its origin: it is one of the best-documented falls in Canadian history.