In the Earth’s Treasures gallery, on the right hand side of the door, against the wall, there is a large glass cabinet containing meteorites of various sizes, shapes and colors.
Tagish Lake CI2 is named after the lake in which it was found, on the border of British Columbia and the Yukon Territory. Incredibly, this seemingly inconspicuous little fragment may hold the key to understanding the origins of the solar system, dating back billions of years.
The Tagish Lake meteorite is a carbonaceous carbonate. You must know that carbonaceous chondrites only account for 4.6% of the total number of fallen meteorites!
So, how did this extraordinary fragment get to Earth? On January 18, 2000, a fireball lit up the early morning sky over northern British Columbia and the Yukon Territory. A meteorite weighing 56 tons and about 4 meters in diameter exploded as it entered the Earth's atmosphere. A huge roar shook the surroundings.
A week later, Jim Brook was driving to his hunting lodge when he discovered debris on the frozen waters of Tagish Lake in British Columbia. He guessed these were fragments of the meteorite. Jim knew his hands would contaminate the debris. So he picked them up in plastic bags. And more than 500 fragments - about 1 kilogram - were recovered. When he got home, he immediately put them in the refrigerator.
What a blessing that these pieces fell to Earth in the winter and were frozen by Jim who knew what he was doing. Because then they may still contain frozen liquids and gases from outer space - ice from 4.5 billion years ago. Although the fragments on display are not in the refrigerator, the rest are still stored in a freezer at -80 degrees Celsius.
The meteorite has undergone an incredible journey across time and space, and the fragment's journey as an object of important scientific research has only just begun.