Meteorite hunters rejoice: Antarctica probably harbors 300,000 undiscovered space rocks

An artificial intelligence program suggests there may be hundreds of thousands of meteorites left for scientists to discover on the icy fields of Antarctica and reveals what may be the most likely places to unearth them, a new study finds.

Nearly two-thirds of all meteorites recovered on Earth originate in Antarctica. The cold, dry nature of the frozen continent helps preserve these extraterrestrial rocks, and the dark colors of these stones make them stand out against ice and snow. Meteorites were originally part of planetary bodies, and so these space rocks from the bottom of the world have yielded many valuable clues about the nature, origins and evolution of the rest of the solar system.