The news of the Winchcombe meteorite shower of February 28, 2021 can best be summed up by a quote that appeared in a National Geographic piece that appeared the following month; said the typically serene cosmochemist, Sara Russell, the lead researcher at the Planetary Materials Group at the Natural History Museum in London, “We’ve all just gone bananas!” As described in the Meteoritical Bulletin (abridged): “A bright fireball was observed blazing across the sky, travelling from approximately W to E over the United Kingdom at 21:54 (UT) on 28 February 2021. The fireball was recorded by 14 stations operated by the six meteor camera networks comprising the UK Fireball Alliance. It was also caught on numerous dashboard and doorbell cameras. There were over 1000 eyewitness accounts from across the entire UK, as well as Ireland and northern Europe, with reports of a sonic boom in the local area. The following morning, the Wilcock family discovered a pile of dark stones and powder on their driveway in the town of Winchcombe, Gloucestershire. Material from the impact site was collected into plastic bags that morning.” The Bulletin goes on to describe who found what in the ensuing days, and the name that comes up most often is that of Chris Casey, an intrepid meteorite hunter who recovered multiple specimens over the course of a week. Now offered is one of Mr. Casey’s finds. Winchcombe is a CM2 meteorite (it contains small chondrules, CAIs and hydrated minerals in a fine-grained carbon-rich, charcoal-hued matrix). Many CM2s are also rich in prebiotic compounds and amino acids. The presence of organic compounds has been detected in Winchcombe — initially by the sense of smell, where at least one stone was described as having a "compost-like" aroma. While humans have 20 amino acids, the building blocks of proteins and life, nearly 100 amino acids have been found in CM2 meteorites — providing further impetus to the increasingly popular Panspermia Theory of Creation: fertil

Chris Casey & Martin Goff, United Kingdom