Questions tagged [meteorite]
Questions regarding one of the three forms of space debris, this case a chunk of debris that survives its passage through the atmosphere and lands on a planet intact.
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Is there any idea how lunar craters size relate to the size of the meteorites which created them?
Reading this, it surprised me the amount of craters there are on the moon
There are at least 1.3 million craters larger than 1 km (0.62 mi) in diameter; of these, 83,000 are greater than 5 km (3 mi) ...
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Can a crater form inside another crater
Simple question.
Can a crater, theoretically, form inside another crater? Say if a very large one just happened to, by sheer cosmic coincidence, had another smaller meteorite fall inside and impact ...
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Why do meteorites often look like a chain of individual dots? [duplicate]
I noticed that in many videos meteorites look like a chain of moving luminous points.
What could be the reason for this phenomenon?
Screenshots:
Preview
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How many tsunamis have been caused by meteorites falling?
I don't know if this is a better fit for Earth Science (because of the tsunami part) or for Astronomy (because of the meteorite part).
The Wikipedia page on tsunamis says that tsunamis can be caused ...
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Safest Place on Earth from Falling Meteorites
Where on Earth is statistically safer if an asteroid was to break up in the Roche limit and rain meteorites effectively resetting the Earth? I would imagine that a ring of falling meteors would form ...
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Did I see a meteorite in daylight? (4.30pm on 11/6/23
l saw a meteorite from my backyard at an elevation of about on 50ft on 11/6/23 at 4.30pm. It travelled from approx ENE to WSW in about 1-2 seconds. The object was traveling horizontally, not falling, ...
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Was that actually a shooting star during the supermoon eclipse on September 27th 2015?
During the super-moon total lunar eclipse on September 27th a meteor-like streak passed very close within view of the event. It appeared to happen at the very middle, the maximum eclipse.
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Which kind of celestial body killed dinosaurs?
Well, the internet lies a lot, so there's so much information mixed with misinformation...
Some sources call what killed the dinosaurs an asteroid and others a meteor.
Is there any consensus on this?
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If two asteroids will collide, how can we call it?
If a smaller celestial body collides with a larger celestial body, but neither is classified as a planet, what do we call the smaller celestial body that collided with the larger one?
Asteroid/...
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Is there a way to tell the difference between earth andesite from Mars
I'm curious if there is a way to test if this sample might be Martian andesite.
What type of oxygen isotope (or other) test can be done to address this in some way?
As background, any information ...
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What exactly is an aerolite?
I have found definitions calling it a stony metiorite, calling it a meteor of silicate, a granite meteorite, or even calling it a metallic rock from space and more. What is the actual definition?
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Does Mars get hit by as many meteors as the Earth?
The Moon gets bombarded by meteors at the same rate as the Earth according to
What the moon's craters reveal about earth's history
Does Mars or any other planet get bombarded at the same rate as the ...
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Are the 2 planets in this image Venus and Saturn? And is this a fireball shooting star in top right of picture?
I took this picture with my iPhone on January 23, 2023 @6:01pm CST. I am in West Central Alabama very close to the Tenn-Tom Waterway a few miles from the MS state line. I was facing west-southwest.
I ...
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Is it possible for a meteorite to start a fire on the ground?
Just came across this video (which has already been debunked) where it is claimed that a meteorite caused a house fire. (Turns out the meteorite actually landed about 200 miles away.)
Most of the ...
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If a supernova explodes all it's comets into space, can they reach a big number of star systems?
If there's DNA life that arises on a warm planet 2 billion years after the big bang, and meteorite collisions on the planet propagate DNA unicellular organisms into millions of icy rocks orbiting the ...
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What fraction of meteorites found on Earth are for practical purposes non-magnetic?
Of all the meteorites that land on Earth's surface that are let's say pebble to fist sized, what fraction are for practical purposes non-magnetic1?
I think the number is around 10 or 20% but so far I ...
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Is any meteorite known to come from a comet?
Comets are mostly icy but they should have some rocky components too, right? I wonder if there's any rocky piece of a former comet among collected meteorites. Is it possible today to identify a ...
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How can I identify if my stone is meteorite?
I found 2 stones in my village. One of them is magnet attractive, well-shaped, no bubbles etc. I just want to clarify if it is meteorite, but in my country (Azerbaijan) there's not such a lab. Is it ...
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Water Ice on Meteorites
I was reading an article by David O'Brien et al. where it stated
"in meteorites only the water bound to the silicates can be found, all the water ice having been lost, whereas on asteroids water ...
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Does magnetosphere have an influence on where meteorites would impact on Earth?
I have an interest in geology and I have taken an interest in learning about meteorites recently. This may be a redundant question but it seems as if there are meteorite rich areas where there seem to ...
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Could the James Webb Space Telescope be protected from meteorites?
Unfortunately a meteorite has already hit the telescope and caused irreversible damage to it. I was wondering if they could have provided a cover or shield, to protect it when it is not observing. Or ...
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Has the small meteorite that hit Webb done a lot of damage?
I read on the web about Webb:
A tiny meteoroid struck the newly deployed James Webb Space Telescope in May, knocking one of its gold-plated mirrors out of alignment but not changing the orbiting ...
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Why are what end up being meteorites not in stable orbit as planets and large asteroids are?
We don't have to worry about Mars, etc. hitting Earth. Is it that, being smaller, small asteroids have less inertia and so are more affected by, I guess, the gravity of various planets?
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Hot meteorite lands on bed
A meteorite went through a roof and landed on a bed in Golden B. C., Canada in October of 2021.
I thought meteorites would be very hot. Why didn’t the bed catch fire?
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How many meteorites have been found some place other than Earth? Where is an authoritative list maintained?
Backgound:
After seeing this tweet by astronomer Kacper Wierzchoś about our not-so-new but at least newly-discovered "mini-moon" I scrolled down and saw the tweeted image below.
The object ...
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Is the Ordovician meteor event detectable in the lunar cratering record?
Approximately 468 million years ago there were a large number of L-chondrite meteorites falling to Earth. This is called the Ordovician meteor event and was probably the result of a large collision in ...
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What is the difference between asteroids, comets and meteors?
Some celestial objects seem to be referred to as asteroids, some as comets, and some as meteors or meteorites.
What is the distinction between all of these different objects? Are any of them the same?...
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What factors influence the Widmanstätten pattern in iron meteorites?
The cores of iron meteorites exhibit beautiful Widmanstätten patterns, as shown below in the Alvord meteorite (photo by Jim H):
I understand these patterns form when the molten nickel-iron core of ...
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Are interstellar meteorites more common on the moon's polar regions?
Given that the rocks of the solar system mostly travel on the disc, is there any considerable probability that impacts on the moon coming straight up and down can be interstellar rocks?
If axis-...
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What are the most valuable meteorites and asteroids in terms of precious metals?
There were some suggestions that asteroids could one day be mined for precious metals. I have found an outdated study that says that some siderites contain as much as 0.001% of gold:
http://pubs.usgs....
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Absolute model ages of lunar craters
I have been looking at several articles on the dating methods of craters, but I am wondering how exactly the "absoluteness" creeps into it. I came across several methods that link crater &...
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Origins of meteorites?
I am aware that the vast majority of meteorites come from the asteroid belt (including 4 Vesta), with some from the Moon and Mars. Are there any other locations from which meteorites have originated (...
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Why isn't the moon's surface made of mini craters?
I thought that the millions of mini rocks that hit the moon would cause it to be entirely cratered and not flat.
Why is the moon not like this:
why aren't craters visible in the footprint photo?
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Was there ever a meteorite with a measurable gravity?
Did we ever find a meteorite (a meteoroid that has fallen down to Earth) whose mass, density and gravity were high enough to demonstrate their gravity similar to the Cavendish experiment, so that ...
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Have we found any Venusian meteorites? [duplicate]
Many Martian meteorites have been found on Earth. It also is possible for Earth rocks to have landed on Mars. So I guess it would also be possible for meteorites on Earth to come from Venus. Have any ...
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How do scientists know that a rock found on Earth came from Mars?
There are many documented cases of meteorites being reported as from Mars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Hills_84001
While I can understand that it's possible to know if a rock originated as a ...
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Could martian meteorites come from Olympus Mons?
Could Olympus Mons have thrown ejecta out of Mars' orbit when it was active? Does it fit with the composition and dating of meteorites with martian origin?
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How long between the moment a meteor is first visible and the moment a meteorite hits the ground?
A meteor is usually only visible for a couple seconds at most, but I would guess that it usually stops being visible high above the ground.
Meteors often don't make it to the ground as they completely ...
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What object did I see in the sky? [duplicate]
Tonight, while looking at the night sky, I saw a moving object which I cannot assign to any cosmic or man-made object known to me.
The object looked like a star, and hadn't it been moving, it would ...
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Saint-Exupery describes visit to plateau where he easily finds several meteorites. Is this realistic?
In "Wind, Sand and Stars" Antoine de Saint-Exupéry describes a visit to a plateau where it is extremely easy to discern meteorites from stones, since there are no stones.
I picked up one ...
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Is it possible to find what crater the Mars meteorites come from?
A few dozen meteorites have been determined to come from Mars. These meteorites likely formed from three separate events.
Each one of these events must have created a big enough crater that rocks ...
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Are there Earth rocks on Mars?
Certain meteorites found on Earth have been established to come from Mars: a giant impact ejected rocks from Mars, these rocks traveled through interplanetary space, and went through the Earth's ...
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What could be the name of a huge asteroid I watched some years ago?
Some years ago I was with my family in Venezuela. I'm not sure about the date/hour, but probably it was somewhat around 2007 in the afternoon. We were talking when one of us saw a huge meteor moving "...
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Superconducting space dust; what transient fields could induce persistent current loops?
Science Alert's Superconductivity Has Been Discovered in Meteorites For The First Time quotes from Superconductivity found in meteorites (Wampler et al. PNAS March 23, 2020)
The paper describes the ...
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What is the name of meteoroids which hit Moon, Mars, or pretty much anything that isn’t the Earth?
A meteorite according to the Oxford English Dictionary is
A piece of rock or metal that has fallen to the earth's surface from outer space as a meteor.
But, meteors impact other planets. Are they ...
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How frequently are other planets in the Solar system hit by meteorites?
How frequently are other planets in the Solar system hit by meteorites? For example, is the rate per unit area about the same?
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2019OK energy at impact
The asteroid 2019 OK recently passed at 77.000km of the Earth, with an estimated size of 50-130m.
But if this asteroid had crashed onto the Earth, what would have been its kinetic energy on impact? ...
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Why didn't all the iron and heavier elements find their way to the center of the accretion disc in the early solar system?
I guess that's pretty much it. I just heard that that a meteor fragment was found to be solid iron and it just seems inexplicable that it was floating around.
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Which of the following is the correct usage: meteor / meteorite?
I hope a meteor falls on your head.
or
I hope a meteorite falls on your head.
And why?
Definition of meteor
Definition of meteorite
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Precautions when retrieving material originated from space
I'm assuming that when retrieving a meteor for study and later display, there are precautions taken against possible radiation coming from it. Is my assumption correct and are there other precautions ...
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