Meteorites | Universe Today

If you've ever held a real meteorite in your hand, you probably wanted to know, "Where has this rock been in space and where did it come from?" Until now, no one has been able to definitively establish where the majority of meteorites found on Earth came from because of the changes that occur in meteorites after they are ejected from the asteroids they were originally part of. The most common type of meteorite found on Earth, about 75% of those identified, are chondrites, stony bits of space rocks that didn't undergo any melting while out in space. Two astronomers say have determined that most of these meteorites come from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Using the GEMINI telescope, they found that asteroids in that region are similar to chondrites found on Earth.
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Want to discover an impact crater, and even get it named after you? All you've got to do is spend a few (hundred) hours poring over images in Google Earth or Google Maps. That's exactly what Geologist Arthur Hickman did, turning up a previously unknown impact crater when he was searching for iron ore in the mountains of West Australia.
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On September 15th of last year, a meteorite impacted the Earth near the town of Carancas in Peru. The story made worldwide headlines when hundreds of people who flocked to see the crater reported getting ill. As it turned out, there were no mysterious space illnesses plaguing the population; the super-hot meteorite likely vaporized arsenic-containing water that was near the surface of the impact site, and onlookers and investigators breathed in the noxious gas. The meteorite is again in the spotlight, though not for making people sick. Read more…

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How did life arise on Earth? How did we get from rocks and water to the abundance and variety that we see today? Perhaps the raw ingredients for life, amino acids, were delivered to Earth by a steady bombardment of meteorites. Researchers have turned up space rocks with concentrations of amino acids 10x higher than previously measured, raising hopes that the early Solar System was awash in organic material.
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The common belief is that all meteors come from inside our solar system. Most meteors are thought to be pieces of comet dust or fragments of asteroids that enter Earth’s atmosphere and burn up before they hit the ground, leaving a fiery trail we call “shooting stars.� But a recent observation might put a hole in the idea that these space rocks only come from the immediate vicinity of our solar system. A group of astronomers in Russia believe they observed a meteor of extragalactic origin.
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Astronomers are slowly piecing together the earliest phases of our Solar System's history. At some point, tiny particles of dust clung together forming larger and larger boulders and eventually even mountain-sized chunks of rock. Researchers from UC Davis have pegged the date that this occurred to 4.568 billion years ago, give or take a few million years.
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It's a cosmic whodunit: a meteorite exploded in the air near a remote part of Russia called Tunguska in 1908, and the meteorite that caused the event all but disappeared. Where did it come from? Was it an asteroid or part of a comet? Astronomers have taken up the case, using mathematical simulations to track down the perpetrator. They even think they might even know a few of its siblings.
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So, did you heed my advice? Did you set aside Sunday evening to head out with friends and family to enjoy the Perseid meteor shower. Here in Vancouver, we had cloudy skies into the evening. But on a hunch, I set my alarm for 4 am, when the shower was at its height. What a treat.
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One of most intriguing, and controversial, theories astrobiology is the concept of Panspermia. This idea proposes that life on Earth might have began on another planet, or maybe even out in interstellar space. Scientists have discovered just how hardy microbial life can be, surviving long journeys in the vacuum, cold, and radiation of space. Now an experiment has been devised to see how well microbes can withstand reentry through the Earth's atmosphere.
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What a fantastic month for skywatching. On August 12th, we've got the Perseid meteor shower. On August 28th there'll be a total lunar eclipse. And on September 1st, there might be another meteor shower to enjoy: the Aurigids.
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Asteroid 4 Vesta is the second largest asteroid in the Solar System, stuck between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It was fully formed early on, turning solid and crystallizing within 10 million years of the Solar System's formation. How do scientists know this? They've found a little piece of it right here on Earth. A Vesta meteorite discovered in Antarctica that tells the history of the early Solar System.
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My favourite meteor show is less than 2 weeks away now, so I wanted to give you all another gentle reminder to get organized and make sure that you're able to enjoy the Perseid meteors this year - the shower will be peaking on the night of August 12, and into the next morning. It's going to be a special event because the shower coincides with a new moon. The sky will be at its darkest, and the meteors will be at their brightest.
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My absolute favourite meteor shower every year is the Perseids. They're not the most spectacular meteors of the year, but the weather's nice and warm here in Canada. We always head back home to Hornby Island to visit the family at Perseid time to enjoy them with nice dark skies. We keep the kids awake as long as possible, and then lay back on a mattress, enjoying the sky show.
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One of the best meteor showers of the year - the Geminids - are about to peak. If you've got clear skies, head out on the evening of December 13th, and you could see a few meteors an hour. Unlike most meteor showers, the source of the Geminids is a bit of a mystery, since the dust doesn't seem to originate from a comet. A small asteroid called 3200 Phaethon has been discovered in the right orbit, but astronomers aren't sure how it could be generating enough dust to cause such beautiful meteor showers.
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NASA researchers have discovered organic material inside a meteorite the recently fell in Canada's Tagish Lake. The meteorite is especially valuable because scientists collected it shortly after it crashed in 2000, ensuring it wasn't contaminated by local bacteria. The meteorite seems to contain many small hollow organic globules, which probably formed in the cold molecular cloud of gas and dust that gave birth to the Solar System. Meteorites like this have been falling to Earth for billions of years, and probably seeded the early planet with organic material.
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One of the best meteor showers of the year is about to get rolling, so make sure you mark your calendar. The Leonid Meteor Shower will be peaking on Sunday, November 19, 2006, and you might be able to see as many as 100 meteors an hour. Find the darkest possible skies that you can, and wait until the constellation Leo is highest in the sky. Observers in western Europe, Africa, Brazil and the eastern parts of North America will get the best view this year.
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In theory, asteroids and meteorites are made of the same basic elements; it's just that asteroids are much much bigger. But scientists had always found troubling chemical differences between the two kinds of objects. New data gathered by the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa, which recently visited the near-Earth asteroid Itokawa, shows that there's a good reason for the difference. It's the long-term effect of space weathering - solar and cosmic radiation - that changes the surface of asteroids to look different from meteorites.
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One of the best meteor showers of the year - the Perseids - will get washed out by a nearly full Moon this year. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try and enjoy them anyway. The Moon will be 87% full on Friday, August 11, rising after 10:00pm. Head out after it goes dark, and see if you can spot an Earth grazer; a special kind of meteor that can be very bright and slow, leaving a dramatic tail. After 10:00pm, only the brightest meteors will be visible. 2007 will be much better, when it'll be a moonless sky.
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NASA researchers fortunate enough to be recording the Moon through a 10" telescope equipped with a video camera when they saw a meteoroid strike. The spacerock was only 25 cm (10 inches) wide, but it released 17 billion joules of kinetic energy; the same as 4 tons of TNT. The resulting flash was quick, only lasting 4/10ths of a second, but it was powerful enough to carve out a crater 14 metres (46 feet) wide.
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