Screenshot of the meteorite that crashed through a house in Connecticut on April 19, 2013. Via NBC.
A rock that crashed through a house in Connecticut last weekend has been confirmed to be a meteorite.
Homeowner Larry Beck called police in Wolcott, CT at 10:30 a.m. on April 20, 2013 and said a baseball-sized rock crashed through his home the night before, causing damage to his roof and pipes in the attic before cracking the ceiling in his kitchen. Police reported that people from several towns in the area had called to report a loud boom that rattled windows last Friday evening.
Reports say that at first, police thought the rock was a broken piece of airport runway concrete that had dropped from a plane when landing gear was being lowered. The home is near two airports.
After examining the object on Tuesday, Stefan Nicolescu, the collections manager for the Mineralogy Division at the Yale Peabody Museum confirmed it was in fact a meteorite, likely a chondrite.
The 2013 Lyrid meteors as seen from Windy Point Vista on Mt. Lemmon, Tucson Arizona. (Credit & copyright Sean Parker Photography. In the Universe Today flickr gallery).
Today we residents of planet Earth meet up with a meteor stream with a strange and bizarre past.
The Lyrid meteors occur annually right around April 21st to the 23rd. A moderate meteor shower, observers in the northern hemisphere can expect to see about 20 meteors in the early morning hours under optimal conditions. Such has been the case for recent years past, and this year’s presence of a waxing gibbous Moon has lowered prospects for this April shower considerably in 2013.
But this has not always been the case with this meteor stream. In fact, we have records of the Lyrids stretching back over the past 2,600 years, farther back than any other meteor shower documented.
The earliest account of this shower comes from a record made by Chinese astronomers in 687 BC, stating that “at midnight, stars dropped down like rain.” Keep in mind that this now famous assertion that is generally attributed to the Lyrids was made by mathematician Johann Gottfried Galle in 1867. It was Galle along with Edmond Weiss who noticed the link between the Lyrids and Comet C/1861 G1 Thatcher discovered six years earlier.
Comet Thatcher was discovered on April 5th, 15 days before it reached perihelion about a third of an astronomical unit (A.U.) from the Earth. Comet Thatcher a periodic comet on a 415 year long orbital period.
But in the early to mid-19th century, the very idea that meteor showers were linked to comets or even non-atmospheric phenomena was still hotly contested.
One singular event more than any other triggered this realization. The Leonid meteor storm of 1833 in the early morning hours of November 13th was a stunning and terrifying spectacle for residents of the U.S eastern seaboard. This shower produces mighty outbursts, often topping a Zenithal Hourly Rate (ZHR) of over a 1,000 once every 33 to 34 years. I witnessed a fine outburst of the Leonids from Kuwait in 1998, and we may be in for a repeat performance from this shower around 2032 or 2033.
There is substantial evidence that the Lyrids may also do the same at an undetermined interval. On April 20th 1803, one of the most famous accounts of a “Lyrid meteor storm” was observed up and down the United States east coast. For example, one letter to the Virginia Gazette states;
“From one until three, those starry meteors seemed to fall from every point in the sky heavens, in such numbers as to resemble a shower of sky rockets.”
Another account published in the Raleigh, North Carolina Register states that:
“The whole hemisphere as far as the extension of the horizon seemed illuminated; the meteors kept no particular direction but appeared to move in every way.”
A study of the 1803 Lyrid outburst by W.J. Fisher cites over a dozen accounts of the event and is a fascinating read. Viewers were also primed for the event by the dramatic Leonid storm of 1799 four years earlier.
Interestingly, the Moon was only one day from New phase on the night of the 1803 Lyrids. Prime meteor watching conditions.
An unrelated meteorite fall would also occur four years later over Weston, Connecticut on December 14th, 1807 as recounted by Kathryn Prince in A Professor, A President, and a Meteor. These events would place Yankee politics at odds with the origin of meteors and rocks from the sky.
An apocryphal quote is often attributed to President Thomas Jefferson that highlights the controversy of the day, saying that “I would more easily believe that two Yankee professors would lie than that stones would fall from heaven.”
While both are of cosmogenous origin, no meteorite fall has ever been linked to a meteor shower, which is spawned by dust debris from comets. For example, many in the media erroneously speculated that the Sutter’s Mill meteorite that fell to Earth on the morning of April 22nd, 2012 was in fact a Lyrid meteor.
But a Lyrid may be implicated in another unusual 19th century observation. On April 24th 1874, a professor Scharfarik of Prague, Czechoslovakia was observing the daytime First Quarter Moon with his 4” refractor. The good professor was surprised by an “Apparition on the disc of the Moon of a dazzling white star,” which was “quite sharp and without a perceptible diameter.” Possible suspects are a telescopic meteor moving towards or along the observers’ line of sight or perhaps a Lyrid impacting the dark limb of the Moon.
Moving into the 20th century, rates for the Lyrids have stayed in the ZHR=20 range, with notable peaks of 100+ per hour noted by Japanese observers in 1922 and 100 per hour noted by U.S. observers in 1982.
It should also be noted that another less understood shower radiates from the constellation Lyra in mid-June. First noted Stan Dvorak while hiking in the San Bernardino Mountains in 1966, the June Lyrids produce about 8-10 meteors per hour from June 10 to the 21st. The source of this newly discovered shower is thought to be Comet C/1915 C1 Mellish.
A June Lyrid may have even made its way into modern fiction. As recounted in a July 2004 issue of Sky & Telescope, researchers Marilynn & Donald Olson note the following line from James Joyce’s Ulysses:
“A star, precipitated with great apparent velocity across the firmament from Vega in the Lyre above the zenith.”
Joyce seems to be describing a June Lyrid decades before the shower was officially recognized. The constellation Lyra rides high in the early morning sky for mid-northern latitudes in the early summer months.
All interesting concepts to ponder as we keep an early morning vigil for the Lyrids this week. Could there be more Lyrid storms in the far off future, as Comet Thatcher reaches perihelion once again in the late 23rd century? Could more historical clues of the untold history of this and other showers be awaiting discovery?
Somewhat closer to us in time and space, Paul Wiegert of the University of Ontario has also recently speculated that Comet 2012 S1 ISON may provoke a meteor shower on January 12th, 2014. Regardless of whether ISON turns out to be the “Comet of the Century,” this could be one to watch out for!
Visibility map of the Manhattan meteor (American Meteor Society)
Last night a bright meteor was spotted up and down the northern mid-Atlantic United States from Maryland to Manhattan to Massachusetts. Streaking across the sky just before 8 p.m. EDT, the fireball was witnessed by thousands — the American Meteor Society alone has so far received over 630 reports on its website from the event. (Update 3/25: The AMS has received now over 1170 reports of the meteor.)
While many false images of the meteor quickly began circulating online, the video above is real — captured from a security camera in Thurmont, MD and uploaded to YouTube by Kim Fox (courtesy of Alan Boyle’s article on NBC News’ Cosmic Log.)
So what’s up with all these meteors lately?
According to NASA meteor specialist Bill Cooke, Friday’s fireball — which has become known as the “Manhattan meteor” — was likely caused by a boulder-sized asteroid about 3 feet (0.9 meters) wide entering Earth’s atmosphere. While bolides of this size sometimes result in meteorites that land on the ground, the last reports of the Manhattan meteor have it miles over the Atlantic… any pieces that survived entry and disintegration probably ended up in the ocean.
Here’s another video of the event from a Massachusetts news station.
And if you’re concerned about an apparent increase in the rate of meteors being spotted around the world, don’t be alarmed. Remember — spring isfireball season, after all.
“We’ve known about this phenomenon for more than 30 years. It’s not only fireballs that are affected. Meteorite falls–space rocks that actually hit the ground–are more common in spring as well.”
– Bill Cooke, NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Center
So keep an eye on the sky over the next few weeks — you never know when we’ll be treated to another show!
Impactors strike during the reign of the dinosaurs (image credit: MasPix/devianart)
The recent meteor explosion over Chelyabinsk brought to the forefront a topic that has worried astronomers for years, namely that an impactor from space could cause widespread human fatalities. Indeed, the thousand+ injured recently in Russia was a wake-up call. Should humanity be worried about impactors? “Hell yes!” replied astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson to CNN’s F. Zakharia .
The geological and biological records attest to the fact that some impactors have played a major role in altering the evolution of life on Earth, particularly when the underlying terrestrial material at the impact site contains large amounts of carbonates and sulphates. The dating of certain large impact craters (50 km and greater) found on Earth have matched events such as the extinction of the Dinosaurs (Hildebrand 1993, however see also G. Keller’s alternative hypothesis). Ironically, one could argue that humanity owes its emergence in part to the impactor that killed the Dinosaurs.
More than a dozen known impactors created 50 km sized craters (and larger) on Earth. One such example is the Manicouagan crater in Quebec, Canada. The crater is 215 million years old, and exhibits an 85 km diameter (image credit: NASA).
Only rather recently did scientists begin to widely acknowledge that sizable impactors from space strike Earth.
“It was extremely important in that first intellectual step to recognize that, yes, indeed, very large objects do fall out of the sky and make holes in the ground,” said Eugene Shoemaker. Shoemaker was a co-discoverer of Shoemaker-Levy 9, which was a fragmented comet that hit Jupiter in 1994 (see video below).
Hildebrand 1993 likewise noted that, “the hypothesis that catastrophic impacts cause mass extinctions has been unpopular with many geologists … some geologists still regard the existence of ~140 known impact craters on the Earth as unproven despite compelling evidence to the contrary.”
Beyond the asteroid that struck Mexico 65 million years ago and helped end the reign of the dinosaurs, there are numerous lesser-known terrestrial impactors that also appear destructive given their size. For example, at least three sizable impactors struck Earth ~35 million years ago, one of which left a 90 km crater in Siberia (Popigai). At least two large impactors occurred near the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary (Morokweng and Mjolnir), and the latter may have been the catalyst for a tsunami that dwarfed the recent event in Japan (see also the simulation for the tsunami generated by the Chicxulub impactor below).
Glimsdal et al. 2007 note, “it is clear that both the geological consequences and the tsunami of an impact of a large asteroid are orders off magnitude larger than those of even the largest earthquakes recorded.”
However, in the CNN interview Neil deGrasse Tyson remarked that we’ll presumably identify the larger impactors ahead of time, giving humanity the opportunity to enact a plan to (hopefully) deal with the matter. Yet he added that often we’re unable to identify smaller objects in advance, and that is problematic. The meteor that exploded over the Urals a few weeks ago is an example.
In recent human history the Tunguska event, and the asteroid that recently exploded over Chelyabinsk, are reminders of the havoc that even smaller-sized objects can cause. The Tunguska event is presumed to be a meteor that exploded in 1908 over a remote forested area in Siberia, and was sufficiently powerful to topple millions of trees (see image below). Had the event occurred over a city it may have caused numerous fatalities.
Mark Boslough, a scientist who studied Tunguska noted, “That such a small object can do this kind of destruction suggests that smaller asteroids are something to consider … such collisions are not as improbable as we believed. We should be making more efforts at detecting the smaller ones than we have till now.”
Neil deGrasse Tyson hinted that humanity was rather lucky that the recent Russian fireball exploded about 20 miles up in the atmosphere, as its energy content was about 30 times larger than the Hiroshima explosion. It should be noted that the potential negative outcome from smaller impactors increases in concert with an increasing human population.
In 1908 the Tunguska impactor toppled millions of trees in a rather remote part of Siberia (image credit: Kulik). Had the object exploded over a city, the effects may have been catastrophic.
So how often do large bodies strike Earth, and is the next catastrophic impactor eminent? Do such events happen on a periodic basis? Scientists have been debating those questions and no consensus has emerged. Certain researchers advocate that large impactors (leaving craters greater than 35 km) strike Earth with a period of approximately 26-35 million years.
The putative periodicity (i.e., the Shiva hypothesis) is often linked to the Sun’s vertical oscillations through the plane of the Milky Way as it revolves around the Galaxy, although that scenario is likewise debated (as is many of the assertions put forth in this article). The Sun’s motion through the denser part of the Galactic plane is believed to trigger a comet shower from the Oort Cloud. The Oort Cloud is theorized to be a halo of loosely-bound comets that encompasses the periphery of the Solar System. Essentially, there exists a main belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, a belt of comets and icy bodies located beyond Neptune called the Kuiper belt, and then the Oort Cloud. A lower-mass companion to the Sun was likewise considered as a perturbing source of Oort Cloud comets (“The Nemesis Affair” by D. Raup).
A halo of comets designated the Oort Cloud is theorized to encircle the periphery of the Solar System, and reputedly acts as a reservoir for objects that may become terrestrial impactors (image credit: NASA/JPL).
The aforementioned theory pertains principally to periodic comets showers, however, what mechanism can explain how asteroids exit their otherwise benign orbits in the belt and enter the inner solar system as Earth-crossers? One potential (stochastic) scenario is that asteroids are ejected from the belt via interactions with the planets through orbital resonances. Evidence for that scenario is present in the image below, which shows that regions in the belt coincident with certain resonances are nearly depleted of asteroids. A similar trend is seen in the distribution of icy bodies in the Kuiper belt, where Neptune (rather than say Mars or Jupiter) may be the principal scattering body. Note that even asteroids/comets not initially near a resonance can migrate into one by various means (e.g., the Yarkovsky effect).
Indeed, if an asteroid in the belt were to breakup (e.g., collision) near a resonance, it would send numerous projectiles streaming into the inner solar system. That may help partly explain the potential presence of asteroid showers (e.g., the Boltysh and Chicxulub craters both date to near 65 million years ago). In 2007, a team argued that the asteroid which helped end the reign of the Dinosaurs 65 million years ago entered an Earth-crossing orbit via resonances. Furthermore, they noted that asteroid 298 Baptistina is a fragment of that Dinosaur exterminator, and it can be viewed in the present orbiting ~2 AU from the Sun. The team’s specific assertions are being debated, however perhaps more importantly: the underlying transport mechanism that delivers asteroids from the belt into Earth-crossing orbits appears well-supported by the evidence.
A histogram featuring the number of asteroids as a function of their average distance from the Sun. Regions depleted of asteroids are often coincident with orbital resonances, the latter being a mechanism by which objects in the belt can be scattered into enter Earth-crossing orbits (image credit: Alan Chamberlain, JPL/Caltech).
Thus it appears that the terrestrial impact record may be tied to periodic and random phenomena, and comet/asteroid showers can stem from both. However, reconstructing that terrestrial impact record is rather difficult as Earth is geologically active (by comparison to the present Moon where craters from the past are typically well preserved). Thus smaller and older impactors are undersampled. The impact record is also incomplete since a sizable fraction of impactors strike the ocean. Nevertheless, an estimated frequency curve for terrestrial impacts as deduced by Rampino and Haggerty 1996 is reproduced below. Note that there is considerable uncertainty in such determinations, and the y-axis in the figure highlights the “Typical Impact Interval”.
Estimated frequency of impactors as a function of diameter, energy yield, and typical impact interval. Results assume an impact speed of 20 km/s and density of 3 g/cm^3 (image credit: Fig. 2 from Rampino and Haggerty 1996, NASA ADS/Springer).
In sum, as noted by Eugene Shoemaker, large objects do indeed fall out of the sky and cause damage. It is unclear when in the near or distant future humanity will be forced to rise to the challenge and counter an incoming larger impactor, or again deal with the consequences of a smaller impactor that went undetected and caused human injuries (the estimated probabilities aren’t reassuring given their uncertainty and what’s in jeopardy). Humanity’s technological progress and scientific research must continue unabated (and even accelerated), thereby affording us the tools to better tackle the described situation when it arises.
Is discussion of this topic fear mongering and alarmist in nature? The answer should be obvious given the fireball explosion that happened recently over the Ural mountains, the Tunguska event, and past impactors. Given the stakes excessive vigilance is warranted.
Fareed Zakharia’s discussion with Neil deGrasse Tyson is below.
3-D perspective map of the Decorah impact feature looking northward. (Credit: USGS/Adam Kiel graphic/Northeast Iowa RC&D).
A monster lurks under northeastern Iowa. That monster is in the form of a giant buried basin, the result of a meteorite impact in central North America over 470 million years ago.
A recent aerial survey conducted by the state of Minnesota Geological Survey and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) confirms the existence of an impact structure long suspected near the eastern edge of the town of Decorah, Iowa. The goal of the 60 day survey was a routine look at possible mineral and water resources in the region, but the confirmation of the crater was an added plus. Continue reading “Giant Ancient Impact Crater Confirmed in Iowa”
Lecturer at Ural Federal University's Institute of Physics and Technology Viktor Grokhovsky with meteorite fragment found during an expedition in the Chelyabinsk region on February 25, 2013. Credit: RIA Novosti / Pavel Lysizin.
Scientists and meteorites hunters have been on a quest to find bits of rock from the asteroid which exploded over the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia on February 15. More than 100 fragments have been found so far that appear to be from the space rock, and now scientists from Russia’s Urals Federal University have discovered the biggest chunk so far, a meteorite fragment weighing more than one kilogram (2.2 lbs).
The asteroid has been estimated to be about 15 meters (50 feet) in diameter when it struck Earth’s atmosphere, traveling several times the speed of sound, and exploded into a fireball, sending a shockwave to the city below, which broke windows and caused other damage to buildings, injuring about 1,500 people.
A hole in Chebarkul Lake made by meteorite debris. Photo by Chebarkul town head Andrey Orlov. Via RT.com
Fragments of the meteorite have been found along a 50 kilometer (30 mile) trail under the meteorite’s flight path. Small meteorites have also been found in an eight-meter (25 feet) wide crater in the region’s Lake Chebarkul, scientists said earlier this week. Viktor Grokhovsky from the Urals University believes there are more to be found, including a possible biggest chunk that he says may lie at the bottom of Lake Chebarkul. It could be up to 60cm in diameter, he estimated.
This video from NASA explains more:
Please note that while many pieces have been found, and if you are looking to buy a chunk of this famous meteorite, you need to approach this with a lot of skepticism. There have been some reports of people trying to sell pieces that they claim to be from the Ural/Russian meteorite, but they likely are not. Be careful and do your research on the seller before you buy.
econstructed orbits for the Chelyabinsk meteoroid. Credit: Jorge Zuluaga and Ignacio Ferrin, University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia
Just a week after a huge fireball streaked across the skies of the Chelyabinsk region of Russia, astronomers published a paper that reconstructs the orbit and determines the origins of the space rock that exploded about 14-20 km (8-12.5 miles) above Earth’s surface, producing a shockwave that damaged buildings and broke windows.
Researchers Jorge Zuluaga and Ignacio Ferrin at the University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia used a resource not always available in meteorite falls: the numerous dashboard and security cameras that captured the huge fireball. Using the trajectories shown in videos posted on YouTube, the researchers were able to calculate the trajectory of the meteorite as it fell to Earth and use it to reconstruct the orbit in space of the meteoroid before its violent encounter with our planet.
The results are preliminary, Zuluaga told Universe Today, and they are already working on getting more precise results. “We are working hard to produce an updated and more precise reconstruction of the orbit using different pieces of evidence,” he said via email.
But through their calculations, Zuluaga and Ferrin determined the rock originated from the Apollo class of asteroids.
Using triangulation, the researchers used two videos specifically: one from a camera located in the Revolutionary Square in Chelyabinsk and one video recorded in the a nearby city of Korkino, along with the location of a hole in the ice in Lake Chebarkul, 70km west of Chelyabinsk. The hole is thought to have come from the meteorite that fell on February 15.
Zuluaga and Ferrin were inspired to use the videos by Stefen Geens, who writes the Ogle Earth blog and who pointed out that the numerous dashcam and security videos may have gathered data about the trajectory and speed of the meteorite. He used this data and Google Earth to reconstruct the path of the rock as it entered the atmosphere and showed that it matched an image of the trajectory taken by the geostationary Meteosat-9 weather satellite.
But due to variations in time and date stamps on several of the videos — some which differed by several minutes — they decided to choose two videos from different locations that seemed to be the most reliable.
From triangulation, they were able to determine height, speed and position of the meteorite as it fell to Earth.
This video is a virtual exploration of the preliminary orbit computed by Zuluaga & Ferrin
But figuring out the meteroid’s orbit around the Sun was more difficult as well as less precise. They needed six critical parameters, all which they had to estimate from the data using Monte Carlo methods to “calculate the most probable orbital parameters and their dispersion,” they wrote in their paper. Most of the parameters are related to the “brightening point” – where the meteorite becomes bright enough to cast a noticeable shadow in the videos. This helped determine the meteorite’s height, elevation and azimuth at the brightening point as well as the longitude, latitude on the Earth’s surface below and also the velocity of the rock.
“According to our estimations, the Chelyabinski meteor started to brighten up when it was between 32 and 47 km up in the atmosphere,” the team wrote. “The velocity of the body predicted by our analysis was between 13 and 19 km/s (relative to the Earth) which encloses the preferred figure of 18 km/s assumed by other researchers.”
They then used software developed by the US Naval Observatory called NOVAS, the Naval Observatory Vector Astrometry to calculate the likely orbit. They concluded that the Chelyabinsk meteorite is from the Apollo asteroids, a well-known class of rocks that cross Earth’s orbit.
According to The Technology Review blog, astronomers have seen over 240 Apollo asteroids that are larger than 1 km but believe there must be more than 2,000 others that size.
However, astronomers also estimate there might be about 80 million out there that are about same size as the one that fell over Chelyabinsk: about 15 meters (50 feet) in diameter, with a weight of 7,000 metric tons.
In their ongoing calculations, the research team has decided to make future calculations not using Lake Chebarkul as one of their triangulation points.
“We are acquainted with the skepticism that the holes in the icesheet of the lake have been produced artificially,” Zuluaga told Universe Today via email. “However I have also read some reports indicating that pieces of the meteoroid have been found in the area. So, we are working hard to produce an updated and more precise reconstruction of the orbit using different pieces of evidence.”
Many have asked why this space rock was not detected before, and Zuluaga said determining why it was missed is one of the goals of their efforts.
“Regretfully knowing the family at which the asteroid belongs is not enough,” he said. “The question can only be answered having a very precise orbit we can integrate backwards at least 50 years. Once you have an orbit, that orbit can predict the precise position of the body in the sky and then we can look for archive images and see if the asteroid was overlooked. This is our next move!”
A polished slice of one of Russian meteorite samples. You can see round grains called chondrules and shock veins lined with melted rock. The meteorite is probably non-uniform. The preliminary analysis showed that the meteorite belongs to chemical type L or LL, petrologic type 5.
A little more than week ago a 7,000 ton, 50-foot (15-meter) wide meteoroid made an unexpected visit over Russia to become the biggest space rock to enter the atmosphere since the Tunguska impact in 1908. While scientists still debate whether it was asteroid or comet that sent a tree-flattening shockwave over the Tunguska River valley, we know exactly what fell last Friday.
Now is a fitting time to get more familiar with these extraterrestrial rocks that drop from out of nowhere.
The Russian meteoroid – the name given an asteroid fragment before it enters the atmosphere – became a brilliant meteor during its passage through the air. If a cosmic rock is big enough to withstand the searing heat and pressure of entry, fragments survive and fall to the ground as meteorites. Most of the meteors or “shooting stars” we see on a clear night are bits of rock the size of apple seeds. When they strike the upper atmosphere at tens of thousands of miles an hour, they vaporize in a flash of light. Case closed. But the one that boomed over the city of Chelyabinsk was big enough to to survive its last trip around the Sun and sprinkle the ground with meteorites.
The two main smoke trails left by the Russian meteor as it passed over the city of Chelyabinsk. Credit: AP Photo/Chelyabinsk.ru
Ah, but the Russian fireball didn’t get off the hook that easy. The overwhelming air pressure at those speeds combined with re-entry temperatures around 3,000 degrees F (1,650 C) shattered the original space rock into many pieces. You can see the dual trails created by two of the larger hunks in the photo above.
Scientists at Urals Federal University in Yekaterinburg examined 53 small meteorite fragments deposited around a hole in ice-covered Chebarkul Lake 48 miles (77 km) west of Chelyabinsk the following day. Chemical analysis revealed the stones contained 10% iron-nickel metal along with other minerals commonly found in stony meteorites. Since then, hundreds of fragments have been dug out of the snow by people in surrounding villages. As specimens continue to be recovered and analyzed, here’s an overview — and a look at what we know — of these space rocks that pay us a visit from time to time.
Bright fireball breaking up over Yellow Springs, Ohio. Credit: John Chumack
How many times has a meteor taken your breath away? A brilliant fireball streaking across the night sky ranks among the most memorable astronomical sights most of us will ever see. Like objects in your side view mirror, meteors appear closer than they really are. And it’s all the more true when they’re exceptionally bright. Studies show however that meteors burn up at least 50 miles (80 km) overhead. If big enough to remain intact and land on the ground, the fragments go completely dark 5-12 miles (8-19 km) high during the “dark flight” phase. A meteor passing overhead would be at the minimum distance of about 50 miles (80 km) from the observer.
Since most sightings are well off toward one direction or another, you have to add your horizontal distance to the meteor’s height to get a true distance. While some meteors are bright enough to trick us into thinking they landed just over the next hill, nearly all are many miles away. Even the Russian meteor, which put on a grand show and blasted the city of Chelyabinsk with a powerful shock wave, dropped fragments dozens of miles to the west. We lack the context to appreciate meteor distances, perhaps unconsciously comparing what we see to an aerial fireworks display.
Very cute Youtube video of Sasha Zarezina, 8, who lives in a small Siberian village, as she hunts for meteorite fragments in the snow after Friday’s meteor over Russia. Credit: Ben Solomon/New York Times
An estimated 1,000 tons (907 metric tons) to more than 10,000 tons (9,070 MT) of material from outer space lands on Earth every day delivered free of charge from the main Asteroid Belt. Crack-ups between asteroids in the distant past are nudged by Jupiter into orbits that cross that of Earth’s. Most of the stuff rains down as micrometeoroids, bits of grit so small they’re barely touched by heating as they gently waft their way to the ground. Many larger pieces – genuine meteorites – make it to Earth but are missed by human eyes because they fall in remote mountains, deserts and oceans. Since over 70% of Earth’s surface’s is water, think of all the space rocks that must sink out of sight forever.
A fragment of the Sikhote-Alin iron meteorite that fell over eastern Russia (then the Soviet Union) on Feb. 12, 1947. Credit: Bob King
About 6-8 times a year however, a meteorite-producing fireball streaks over a populated area of the world. Using eyewitness reports of time, direction of travel along with more modern tools like video surveillance cameras and Doppler weather radar, which can ping the tracks of falling meteorites, scientists and meteorite hunters have a great many clues on where to look for space rocks.
Since most meteorites break into pieces in mid-air, the fragments are dispersed over the ground in a large oval called the strewnfield. The little pieces fall first and land at the near end of the oval; the bigger chunks travel farthest and fall at the opposite end.
When a new potential meteorite falls, scientists are eager to get a hold of pieces as soon as possible. Back in the lab, they measure short-lived elements called radionuclides created when high-energy cosmic rays in space alter elements in the rock. Once the rock lands on Earth, creation of these altered elements stops. The proportions of radionuclides tell us how long the rock traveled through space after it was ejected by impact from its mother asteroid. If a meteorite could write a journal, this would be it.
Other tests that examine the decay of radioactive elements like uranium into lead tells us the age of the meteorite. Most are 4.57 billion years old. Hold a meteorite and you’ll be whisked back to a time before the planets even existed. Imagine no Earth, no Jupiter.
10x closeup of a very thin slice through a chondrule in the meteorite NWA 4560. Crystals of olivine (bright colors) and pyroxene (grays) are visible. Credit: Bob King
Many meteorites are jam-packed with tiny rocky spheres called chondrules. While their origin is still a topic of debate, chondrules (KON-drools) likely formed when blots of dust in the solar nebula were flash-heated by the young sun or perhaps by powerful bolts of static electricity. Sudden heating melted the motes into chondrules which quickly solidified. Later, chondrules agglomerated into larger bodies that ultimately grew into planets through mutual gravitational attraction. You can always count on gravity to get the job done. Oh, just so you know, meteorites are no more radioactive than many common Earth rocks. Both contain trace amounts of radioactive elements at trifling levels.
A stunning slice of the Glorieta pallasite meteorite cut thin enough to allow light to shine through its many olivine crystals. Click to see more of Mike’s photos. Credit: Mike Miller
Meteorites fall into three broad categories – irons (mostly metallic iron with smaller amounts of nickel), stones (composed of rocky silicates like olivine, pyroxene and plagioclase and iron-nickel metal in form of tiny flakes) and stony-irons (a mix of iron-nickel metal and silicates). The stony-irons are broadly subdivided into mesosiderites, chunky mixes of metal and rock, and pallasites.
Pallasites are the beauty queens of the meteorite world. They contain a mix of pure olivine crystals, better known as the semi-precious gemstone peridot, in a matrix of iron-nickel metal. Sliced and polished to a gleaming finish, a pallasite wouldn’t look out of place dangling from the neck of an Oscar winner. About 95% of all found or seen-to-fall meteorites are the stony variety, 4.4% are irons and 1% stony-irons.
A slice of the NWA 5205 meteorite from the Sahara Desert displays wall-to-wall chondrules. Credit: Bob King
Earth’s atmosphere is no friend to space rocks. Collecting them early prevents damage by the two things most responsible for keeping us alive: water and oxygen. Unless a meteorite lands in a dry desert environment like the Sahara or the “cold desert” of Antarctica, most are easy prey to the elements. I’ve seen meteorites collected and sliced open within a week after a fall that already show brown stains from rusting nickel-iron. Antarctica is off-limits to all but professional scientists, but thanks to amateur collectors’ efforts in the Sahara Desert, Oman and other regions, thousands of meteorites including some of the rarest types, have come to light in recent years.
Greg Hupe, renowned meteorite hunter, wears a big smile after finding a fresh 33.7g meteorite of the Mifflin, Wis. fall in 2010. Credit: Greg Hupe
Hunters share their finds with museums, universities and through outreach efforts in the schools. A portion of the material is sold to other collectors to finance future expeditions, pay for plane tickets and sit down to a good meal after the hunt. Finding a meteorite of your own is hard but rewarding work. If you’d like to have a go at it, here’s a basic checklist of qualities that separate space rocks from Earth rocks:
* Attracts a magnet. Most meteorites – even stony ones – contain iron.
* Most are covered with a matt-black, slightly bumpy fusion crust that colors dark brown with age. Look for hints of rounded chondrules or tiny bits of metal sticking up through the crust.
* Aerodynamic shape from its flight through the atmosphere, but be wary of stream-eroded rocks which appear superficially similar
* Some are dimpled with small thumbprint-like depressions called regmaglypts. These form when softer materials melt and stream away during atmospheric entry. Some meteorites also display hairline-thin, melted-rock flow lines rippling across their exteriors.
Beware of imitations! These are chunks of industrial slag that are often confused with real meteorites. Meteorites don’t have bubbly surfaces. Credit: Bob King
Should your rock passes the above tests, file off an edge and look inside. If the interior is pale with shining flecks of pure metal (not mineral crystals), your chances are looking better. But the only way to be certain of your find is to send off a piece to a meteorite expert or lab that does meteorite analysis. Industrial slag with its bubbly crust and dark, smooth volcanic rocks called basalts are the most commonly found meteor-wrongs. We imagine that meteorites must have bubbly crust like a cheese pizza; after all, they’ve been oven-baked by the atmosphere, right? Nope. Heating only happens in the outer millimeter or two and crusts are generally quite smooth.
Look Ma, no chondrules. NWA 3147 is an achondrite eucrite meteorite that probably originated from the asteroid Vesta. Credit: Bob King
Stony meteorites are further subdivided into two broad types – chondrites, like the Russian fall, and achondrites, so-called because they lack chondrules. Achondrites are igneous rocks formed from magma deep within an asteroid’s crust and lava flows on the surface. Some eucrites (YOU-crites), the most common type of achondrite, likely originated as fragments shot into space from impacts on Vesta. Measurements by NASA’s Dawn space mission, which orbited the asteroid from July 2011 to September 2012, have found great similarities between parts of Vesta’s crust and eucrites found on Earth.
We also have meteorites from Mars and the Moon. They got here the same way the rest of them did; long-ago impacts excavated crustal rocks and sent them flying into space. Since we’ve studied moon rocks brought back by the Apollo missions and sampled Mars atmosphere with a variety of landers, we can compare minerals and gases found inside potential moon and Mars meteorites to confirm their identity.
Some of the 53 chondrite meteorites found around Chebarkul Lake. Many are coated with a thin crust of melted and blackened rock heating by the atmosphere. The sign reads: Meteorite Chebarkul. Credit: AP / The Urals Federal University Press Service, Alexander Khlopotov
Scientists study space rocks for clues of the Solar System’s origin and evolution. For the many of us, they provide a refreshing “big picture” perspective on our place in the Universe. I love to watch eyes light up with I pass around meteorites in my community education astronomy classes. Meteorites are one of the few ways students can “touch” outer space and feel the awesome span of time that separates the origin of the Solar System and present day life.
US-European Asteroid Impact and Deflection mission – AIDA.
Planetary Defense is a concept very few people heard of or took seriously – that is until last week’s humongous and totally unexpected meteor explosion over Russia sent millions of frightened residents ducking for cover, followed just hours later by Earth’s uncomfortably close shave with the 45 meter (150 ft) wide asteroid named 2012 DA14.
This ‘Cosmic Coincidence’ of potentially catastrophic space rocks zooming around Earth is a wakeup call that underscores the need to learn much more about the ever present threat from the vast array of unknown celestial debris in close proximity to Earth and get serious about Planetary Defense from asteroid impacts.
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) proposed Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment mission, or AIDA, could significantly bolster both our basic knowledge about asteroids in our neighborhood and perhaps even begin testing Planetary Defense concepts and deflection strategies.
After two years of work, research teams from the US and Europe have selected the mission’s target – a so called ‘binary asteroid’ named Didymos – that AIDA will intercept and smash into at about the time of its closest approach to Earth in 2022 when it is just 11 million kilometers away.
“AIDA is not just an asteroid mission, it is also meant as a research platform open to all different mission users,” says Andres Galvez, ESA studies manager.
Asteroid Didymos could provide a great platform for a wide variety of research endeavors because it’s actually a complex two body system with a moon – and they orbit each other. The larger body is roughly 800 meters across, while the smaller one is about 150 meters wide.
Didymos with its Moon. Credit: ESA
So the smaller body is some 15 times bigger than the Russian meteor and 3 times the size of Asteroid 2012 DA14 which flew just 27,700 km (17,200 mi) above Earth’s surface on Feb. 15, 2013.
The low cost AIDA mission would be comprised of two spacecraft – a mother ship and a collider. Two ships for two targets.
The US collider is named the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART and would smash into the smaller body at about 6.25 km per second. The impact should change the pace at which the objects spin around each other.
ESA’s mothership is named Asteroid Impact Monitor, or AIM, and would carry out a detailed science survey of Didymos both before and after the violent collision.
“The project has value in many areas,” says Andy Cheng, AIDA lead at Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory, “from applied science and exploration to asteroid resource utilisation.” Cheng was a key member of NASA’s NEAR mission that first orbited and later landed on the near Earth Asteroid named Eros back in 2001.
Recall that back in 2005, NASA’s Deep Impact mission successfully lobbed a projectile into Comet Tempel 1 that unleashed a fiery explosion and spewing out vast quantities of material from the comet’s interior, including water and organics.
NASA’s Deep Impact images Comet Tempel 1 alive with light after colliding with the impactor spacecraft on July 4, 2005. ESA and NASA are now proposing the AIDA mission to smash into Asteroid Didymos. CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD
ESA has invited researchers to submit AIDA experiment proposals on a range of ideas including anything that deals with hypervelocity impacts, planetary science, planetary defense, human exploration or innovation in spacecraft operations. The deadline is 15 March.
“It is an exciting opportunity to do world-leading research of all kinds on a problem that is out of this world,” says Stephan Ulamec from the DLR German Aerospace Center. “And it helps us learn how to work together in international missions tackling the asteroid impact hazard.”
The Russian meteor exploded without warning in mid air with a force of nearly 500 kilotons of TNT, the equivalent of about 20–30 times the atomic bombs detonated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Over 1200 people were injured in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region and some 4000 buildings were damaged at a cost exceeding tens of millions of dollars. A ground impact would have decimated cities like New York, Moscow or Beijing with millions likely killed.
ESA’s AIDA mission concept and NASA’s approved Osiris-REx asteroid sample return mission will begin the path to bolster our basic knowledge about asteroids and hopefully inform us on asteroid deflection and Planetary Defense strategies.
'Name That Space Rock' -- describes the difference between those flying rocks from space. Credit and copyright: Tim Lilis. Used by permission.
With all the various space rocks flying by and into Earth last Friday, perhaps you’ve been wondering about the correct terminology, since a rock from space has different names depending on what it is made of and where it is.
Infographics artist Tim Lillis has put together a primer of sorts, in the form of an infographic, describing the different between a comet, asteroid, meteoroid, meteor and meteorite.
Asteroids are generally larger chunks of rock that come from the asteroid belt located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Sometimes their orbits get perturbed or altered and some asteroids end up coming closer to the Sun, and therefore closer to Earth.
Comets are much like asteroids, but might have a more ice, methane, ammonia, and other compounds that develop a fuzzy, cloud-like shell called a coma – as well as a tail — when it gets closer to the Sun. Comets are thought to originate from two different sources: Long-period comets (those which take more than 200 years to complete an orbit around the Sun) originate from the Oort Cloud. Short-period comets (those which take less than 200 years to complete an orbit around the Sun) originate from the Kuiper Belt.
Space debris smaller than an asteroid are called meteoroids. A meteoroid is a piece of interplanetary matter that is smaller than a kilometer and frequently only millimeters in size. Most meteoroids that enter the Earth’s atmosphere are so small that they vaporize completely and never reach the planet’s surface. And when they do enter Earth’s atmosphere, they gain a different name:
Meteors. Another name commonly used for a meteor is a shooting star. A meteor is the flash of light that we see in the night sky when a small chunk of interplanetary debris burns up as it passes through our atmosphere. “Meteor” refers to the flash of light caused by the debris, not the debris itself.
If any part of a meteoroid survives the fall through the atmosphere and lands on Earth, it is called a meteorite. Although the vast majority of meteorites are very small, their size can range from about a fraction of a gram (the size of a pebble) to 100 kilograms (220 lbs) or more (the size of a huge, life-destroying boulder).
Thanks again to Tim Lillis for sharing his infographic with Universe Today. For more info about Tim’s work, see his Behance page, Flickr site, Twitter, or his website.
