Tag Archives: Meteorite

In some cases, to learn more about our solar system, all we have to do is look at evidence found on Earth. Researchers from Japan’s Nagoya University and the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) have determined how mysterious molten “raindrops” in meteorites formed — and used that information to date Jupiter’s formation. The raindrops are called chondrules. They’re strange …

Ann Hodges never intended to be famous, but in 1954 she found herself thrust into the national spotlight when her afternoon nap was interrupted by a falling meteorite. The Alabama woman has the distinction of being the first documented case of a person being struck by a meteorite. She survived with a bruised hip. In June, a man nearly joined …

Though the Earth doesn’t make a fuss about it, it is bombarded with around 44,000 kilograms (48.5 tons) of meteoritic material every day. Most of it burns up harmlessly in our atmosphere, but some material does make it to the ground.  Fortunately, the Earth is pretty big, and you are unlikely to see one hit the ground anywhere near you. …

Scientists have created the first sizable meteorite diamond — also known as lonsdaleite or hexagonal diamond — a material predicted to be even harder than the diamonds normally found on Earth. The high-pressure, high-temperature technique created tiny disks of this ultrahard diamond which could ultimately replace conventional diamonds in applications such as drilling tools and electronics, the scientists reported July …

On a clear June day in Georgia, a blazing fireball suddenly fell out of the sky over the Atlanta metro area. The source of this spectacle was a 1-ton meteor that exploded in mid-air, sending a cherry tomato-sized fragment shooting through the roof of a McDonough home. Though no one knew it then, this space rock hailed from a time …

A space rock that punched a hole through a Georgia resident’s home earlier this summer may be 20 million years older than our planet, researchers say. The meteorite streaked across the sky as a fireball on June 26, just before a piece of it struck a house in the city of McDonough. A researcher at the University of Georgia (UGA) …

University of Georgia researcher Scott Harris holds a chunk of the McDonough Meteorite (Image credit: University of Georgia) A meteorite that survived atmospheric entry and smashed through the roof of a Georgia home earlier this year may have formed before Earth itself, according to a scientist from the University of Georgia who analyzed fragments of the wandering solar system object. …

A cherry tomato-sized fireball that crashed through the roof of a metro Atlanta house in June was a meteorite 20m years older than Earth, a scientist has determined. In a news release on Friday, University of Georgia planetary geologist Scott Harris said that he arrived at that conclusion after examining 23 grams of fragments from a meteorite that were provided …

A team of Chinese scientists may have cracked the secret behind the strange Canyon Diablo diamonds. Hexagonal in form rather than cubic, the process behind how these diamonds formed has, until now, remained elusive. Diamonds are usually made of carbon atoms in a cubic arrangement (like stacked Lego blocks in a cube pattern). But there is a rarer form, the …

Facebook Tweet Email Link A meteorite that tore through the sky in June shaking the Southeast with a sonic boom is now believed to be 4.56 billion years old, according to researchers who studied it following its crash landing. Fragments of the extraterrestrial rock were turned over to scientists after they fell to Earth this summer to determine their classification …