The famous American critic and satirist, H.L. Mencken, once asserted that every question had an answer that was “neat, plausible, and wrong”. Science is no different. Our meteorite collections have reddish “ordinary” meteorites and black “carbonaceous” ones; meanwhile, in space we see some asteroids with reddish surfaces, while others are pitch black. The connection between the meteorites and the asteroids is thus neat and plausible. But is it right?
The holy grail in asteroids is finding the ones with water and carbon. If we are going to be a space-faring species, we’ll need those chemicals to feed us and power our spacecraft. We know that some carbonaceous meteorites have carbon and water; and they are distinctively black. But not all black meteorites are carbonaceous.