Meteorites (Meteors That Landed / Impacted)

Roky the German shepherd’s doghouse sells for £32,000 after being struck by a meteorite

A dog house struck by a meteorite was sold at auction for £32,000 on Wednesday.

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The wood-and-tin kennel, formerly belonging to Roky the German shepherd, was struck by a meteorite in the city of Aguas Zarcas, Costa Rica in April 2019 during a meteor shower.

Roky “experienced quite a fright” but was unharmed when the meteorite hit, the auctioneer said.

Complete with a large “R” and a seven-inch hole that marks where the meteorite punctured the weathered tin roof, the object was sold off for hundreds of times its original value as part of Christie’s “Deep Impact” auction.

https://inews.co.uk/news/science/roky-german-shepherd-doghouse-sells-32000-struck-meteorite-1478939

maximus otter
 

Secret Government Info Confirms First Known Interstellar Object on Earth, Scientists Say​


An object from another star system crashed into Earth in 2014, the United States Space Command (USSC) confirmed in a newly-released memo.

The meteor ignited in a fireball in the skies near Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, the memo states, and scientists believe it possibly sprinkled interstellar debris into the South Pacific Ocean. The confirmation backs up the breakthrough discovery of the first interstellar meteor—and, retroactively, the first known interstellar object of any kind to reach our solar system—which was initially flagged by a pair of Harvard University researchers in a study posted on the preprint server arXiv in 2019.

Amir Siraj, a student pursuing astrophysics at Harvard who led the research, said the study has been awaiting peer review and publication for years, but has been hamstrung by the odd circumstances that arose from the sheer novelty of the find and roadblocks put up by the involvement of information classified by the U.S. government.

The discovery of the meteor, which measured just a few feet wide, follows recent detections of two other interstellar objects in our solar system, known as ‘Oumuamua and Comet Borisov, that were much larger and did not come into close contact with Earth.

“I get a kick out of just thinking about the fact that we have interstellar material that was delivered to Earth, and we know where it is,” said Siraj, who is Director of Interstellar Object Studies at Harvard’s Galileo Project, in a call. “One thing that I'm going to be checking—and I'm already talking to people about—is whether it is possible to search the ocean floor off the coast of Papua New Guinea and see if we can get any fragments.”

Siraj acknowledged that the odds of such a find are low, because any remnants of the exploded fireball probably landed in tiny amounts across a disparate region of the ocean, making it tricky to track them down.

…a fireball that exploded near Manus Island on January 8, 2014 jumped out at Siraj due to an unusually swift speed exceeding 130,000 miles per hour. This breakneck pace hinted at “a possible origin from the deep interior of a planetary system or a star in the thick disk of the Milky Way galaxy,” according to the team’s 2019 study.

…the study became snarled during the review process by missing information withheld from the CNEOS database by the U.S. government.

Some of the sensors that detect fireballs are operated by the U.S. Department of Defense, which uses the same technologies to monitor the skies for nuclear detonations. As a result, Siraj and Loeb couldn’t directly confirm the margin of error on the fireball’s velocity.

The newly released memo, which is dated March 1 of this year, reveals that [the Chief Scientist of Space Operations Command] at last “confirmed that the velocity estimate reported to NASA is sufficiently accurate to indicate an interstellar trajectory.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyp...n-interstellar-object-on-earth-scientists-say

maximus otter
 
Catch a falling star ...


Scientists are appealing for help to trace fragments of a meteorite.

The space rock is believed to have landed somewhere near Shrewsbury, Shropshire, after being spotted over the county on Wednesday.

Members of the UK Fireball Alliance, spent the bank holiday searching for pieces, but none have been recovered and they are appealing for help.

Prof Katie Joy said the rock would be a glossy black or brown colour, and about the size of an Easter egg.

The alliance, a collaboration between academics and citizen scientists interested in meteor observation and meteorite recovery, has appealed to the community for help tracing it. ...

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-shropshire-61147230
 
I have a good old friend, a college buddy, who swears he saw a meteor fall into a small lake while he was night fishing from the bank.
no reason to doubt him, he’s a rather honest, sensible, and down to earth fellow.
 
Patrick30 said:
I have a good old friend, a college buddy, who swears he saw a meteor fall into a small lake while he was night fishing from the bank.
no reason to doubt him, he’s a rather honest, sensible, and down to earth fellow.
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A small rock fell onto the front of Techy's car when he was driving home one afternoon. He looked around for kids running off, speeding vehicles passing etc but saw nothing to suggest a prank or loose gravel incident. His conclusion was that it was a meterorite.

I was all for us driving back there and searching for it but thought it'd be too hard to find. Pity.
 
Patrick30 said:
I have a good old friend, a college buddy, who swears he saw a meteor fall into a small lake while he was night fishing from the bank.
no reason to doubt him, he’s a rather honest, sensible, and down to earth fellow.
Click to expand...
He could go out with a net and trawl about for it. If it's an interesting one, it might be worth money.
 
kamalktk said:
Rare meteorite that fell on UK driveway may contain 'ingredients for life'

a chondrite.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/08/europe/uk-meteorite-extremely-rare-scn/index.html
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A fireball that lit up the sky over the United Kingdom and Northern Europe on February 28 was an extremely rare type of meteorite. Fragments of the space rock discovered on a driveway in the Cotswolds could provide answers to questions about the early history of the solar system and life on Earth.

Almost 300 grams (10.6 ounces) of the meteorite have been collected from the small Gloucestershire town of Winchcombe by scientists, who said the rock was formed of carbonaceous chondrite. The substance is some of the most primitive and pristine material in the solar system and has been known to contain organic material and amino acids -- the ingredients for life.

The Natural History Museum in London said the fragments were retrieved in such good condition and so quickly after the meteorite's fall that they are comparable to rock samples returned from space missions, both in quality and quantity.
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Extra-terrestrial water has been found in a British meteorite for the first time - and it closely resembles Earth’s oceans, scientists have confirmed.

The Winchcombe meteorite landed on a driveway in Gloucestershire in February last year, and was found so soon after impact that researchers believe it is one of the most pristine ever discovered.

WinchcombeMeteorite.jpg

The chunk of space rock came from the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars, and crucially contains significant amounts of water which match closely to that on Earth, as well as amino acids - important building blocks of life.

Many scientists believe that life began on Earth following bombardment by asteroids or comets containing life-giving ingredients. But most that have been studied contain water that is a different composition to that found on our planet.

The new research shows that the Winchcombe meteorite is comprised of water that is very close to that in Earth’s oceans, suggesting that life was seeded on our planet by rocks floating closer to home.

The Winchcombe meteorite was originally part of a larger carbonaceous asteroid, which formed around 4.6 billion years ago, from the leftover planet building material of the early Solar System.

But after a chunk was knocked off, it took around 300,000 years to reach Earth, scientists believe. It contains around 12 per cent water, which is locked up in minerals in a kind of mud.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...anded-uk-driveway-contains-extra-terrestrial/

maximus otter
 
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Scientists find the source of one of the rarest meteorites to fall on Earth​

The Ivuna meteorite landed in Tanzania in December 1938 and was subsequently split into a number of samples – one of which is housed at the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London.

Based on an analysis of an asteroid known as Ryugu, experts believe the Ivuna rock may have originated from the edge of the solar system.

Professor Sara Russell, a senior research lead at the museum, who is a co-author on the paper, explained: ‘It is a really exciting discovery for me because it shows that meteorites in our museum and in collections around the world, might actually sample most of the solid solar system, from the innermost rocky part to its furthest outer reaches.

The Ivuna falls into a category of extremely rare meteorites known as CI chondrites.

These are stony carbon-containing meteorites that retain the original primitive chemistry from the formation of the solar system more than four billion years ago.

They have been known to contain water – one of the key ingredients to life.

Professor Russell said that apart from Ivuna, only four other known CI-type meteorites exist on Earth: Orgueil and Alais, which both fell in France, Tonk which fell in India, and the tiny Revelstoke meteorite which fell in Canada.

She said: ‘It’s only within the last decade we’ve begun to appreciate just how far objects in the solar system can move towards and away from the sun.’

For the study, the team examined Ryugu samples, which were remotely brought back to Earth in 2020 by Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2.

It is thought that Ryugu, which is classed as a near-Earth object, was born in the outer solar system more than four billion years ago and broke away from a larger body, migrating towards Earth. It is now located between the Earth and Mars and orbits the sun.
Ryugu belongs to a class of asteroids called carbonaceous, or C-type, asteroids.

C-type asteroids are rich in water, carbon and organic compounds from when the solar system formed.

The researchers said both Ryugu and the CI chondrites originate from the same region of space – the outskirts of the solar system – and cannot rule out the possibility that they could even share the same parent body.

Professor Russell said: ‘By comparing the forms of iron in both the asteroids and meteorites, we learnt that Ryugu is a remarkably close match to CI chondrites.’
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Did a meteorite cause a house fire in Nevada County, California?

As this video pretty much acknowledges, it's highly unlikely!
 
I suspect this guy is a grifter.

On Friday night, a bright meteorite fell in Nevada County, California and likely struck the home of Dustn Procita, causing it to catch fire and burn to the ground. (Update: NASA says no. See below.) You can see video of the meteorite in the news report above. From ABC7:

"I heard a big bang. I started to smell smoke and I went onto my porch and it was completely engulfed in flames," Procita said.
It appears a bright ball of light, which lit up the dark northern California sky around 7:30 p.m., landed in the middle of nowhere, KCRA reported.
"They said it was a meteor," Procita said when asked what he thought might have hit his house. "I've always watched meteor showers and stuff as a kid, but I definitely didn't look forward to them landing in my yard or through my roof. I did not see what it was, but from everybody I talked to — was a flaming ball falling from the sky, landed in that general area."
The Penn Valley Fire Department, along with Cal Fire, battled the flames for hours and are now investigating what started the fire in this rural area.
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Update from ABC10:

NASA officials do not currently believe that any particles from any of the meteorites seen Friday touched the ground or started any fires. [William Cooke, manager of NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office ] added that by the time most meteorites hit the ground in general, they are cold.
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https://boingboing.net/2022/11/07/a...nto-this-mans-home-utterly-destroying-it.html
 
kamalktk said:
Rare meteorite that fell on UK driveway may contain 'ingredients for life'

a chondrite.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/08/europe/uk-meteorite-extremely-rare-scn/index.html
-----------------------------------------------------
A fireball that lit up the sky over the United Kingdom and Northern Europe on February 28 was an extremely rare type of meteorite. Fragments of the space rock discovered on a driveway in the Cotswolds could provide answers to questions about the early history of the solar system and life on Earth.

Almost 300 grams (10.6 ounces) of the meteorite have been collected from the small Gloucestershire town of Winchcombe by scientists, who said the rock was formed of carbonaceous chondrite. The substance is some of the most primitive and pristine material in the solar system and has been known to contain organic material and amino acids -- the ingredients for life.

The Natural History Museum in London said the fragments were retrieved in such good condition and so quickly after the meteorite's fall that they are comparable to rock samples returned from space missions, both in quality and quantity.
Click to expand...
More on this:

A meteorite that crashed on the Gloucestershire town of Winchcombe last year contained water that was a near-perfect match for that on Earth.

This bolsters the idea rocks from space brought key chemical components, including water, to the planet early in its history, billions of years ago.

The meteorite is regarded as the most important recovered in the UK.

More than 500g (1lb) of blackened debris was picked up from people's gardens and driveways and local fields, after a giant fireball lit up the night sky.

The crumbly remains were carefully catalogued at London's Natural History Museum (NHM) and then loaned to teams across Europe to investigate.
Water accounted for up to 11% of the meteorite's weight - and it contained a very similar ratio of different types of hydrogen atoms to the water on Earth.

Some scientists say the young Earth was so hot it would have driven off much of its volatile content, including water.

For the Earth to have so much today - 70% of its surface is covered by ocean - suggests there must have been a later addition.

Some say this could have come from a bombardment of icy comets - but their chemistry is not a great match.

Carbonaceous chondrites, however - meteorites such as the Winchcombe one - most certainly are.

And the fact it was recovered less than 12 hours after crashing means it had absorbed very little earthly water, or indeed any contaminants.

"All other meteorites have been compromised in some way by the terrestrial environment," co-first author Dr Ashley King, from the NHM, told
BBC News.

"But Winchcombe is different because of the speed with which it was picked up.

"This means when we measure it, we know the composition we're looking at takes us all the way back to the composition at the beginning of the Solar System, 4.6 billion years ago.

"Bar fetching rock samples back from an asteroid with a spacecraft, we could not have a more pristine specimen.”

Scientists examining the meteorite's carbon- and nitrogen-bearing organic compounds, including its amino acids, had a similarly clean picture.

This is the type of chemistry that could have been a feedstock for biology to begin on the early Earth.

The new analysis also confirms the meteorite's origin.

Camera footage of the fireball has allowed researchers to work out a very precise trajectory.

Calculating backwards, this indicates the meteorite came from the outer asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
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Man Keeps Rock For Years, Hoping It's Gold. It Turns Out to Be Far More Valuable​


In 2015, David Hole was prospecting in Maryborough Regional Park near Melbourne, Australia.

Armed with a metal detector, he discovered something out of the ordinary – a very heavy, reddish rock resting in some yellow clay.

huge-meteor-maryborough-body-image1.jpg


He took it home and tried everything to open it, sure that there was a gold nugget inside the rock – after all, Maryborough is in the Goldfields region, where the Australian gold rush peaked in the 19th century.

To break open his find, Hole tried a rock saw, an angle grinder, a drill, even dousing the thing in acid. However, not even a sledgehammer could make a crack. That's because what he was trying so hard to open was no gold nugget.

As he found out years later, it was a rare meteorite.

Researchers published a scientific paper describing the 4.6 billion-year-old meteorite, which they called Maryborough after the town near where it was found.

It weighs a whopping 17 kilograms (37.5 pounds), and after using a diamond saw to cut off a small slice, the researchers discovered its composition had a high percentage of iron, making it a H5 ordinary chondrite.

Carbon dating suggests the meteorite has been on Earth between 100 and 1,000 years, and there's been a number of meteor sightings between 1889 and 1951 that could correspond to its arrival on our planet.

The researchers argue that the Maryborough meteorite is much rarer than gold, making it far more valuable to science. It's one of only 17 meteorites ever recorded in the Australian state of Victoria, and it's the second largest chondritic mass, after a huge 55-kilogram specimen identified in 2003.

"This is only the 17th meteorite found in Victoria, whereas there's been thousands of gold nuggets found."

https://www.sciencealert.com/man-ke...its-gold-it-turns-out-to-be-far-more-valuable

maximus otter
 

Two minerals never before been seen on Earth found inside 17-ton meteorite​


Two minerals that have never been seen before on Earth have been discovered inside a massive meteorite in Somalia. They could hold important clues to how asteroids form.

The two brand new minerals were found inside a single 2.5 ounce (70 gram) slice taken from the 16.5 ton (15 metric tons) El Ali meteorite, which was found in 2020.

ElAliMeteorite-221129.jpg

Scientists named the minerals elaliite after the meteor and elkinstantonite after Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the managing director of the Arizona State University Interplanetary Initiative and principal investigator of NASA's upcoming Psyche mission, which will send a probe to investigate the mineral-rich Psyche asteroid for evidence of how our solar system's planets formed.

The researchers classified El Ali as an Iron IAB complex meteorite, a type made of meteoric iron flecked with tiny chunks of silicates. While investigating the meteorite slice, details of the new minerals caught the scientists' attention. By comparing the minerals with versions of them that had been previously synthesized in a lab, they were able to rapidly identify them as newly recorded in nature.

https://www.livescience.com/two-new-minerals-found-inside-meteorite

maximus otter
 
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Massive Meteorite Found In Antarctica Is One Of The Largest Ever​


An international team of researchers have just returned from Antarctica with a meteorite that weighs 16.7 pounds/7.6 kg.

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“Size doesn’t necessarily matter when it comes to meteorites, and even tiny micrometeorites can be incredibly scientifically valuable,” says Maria Valdes, a research scientist at the Field Museum and the University of Chicago. “But of course, finding a big meteorite like this one is rare and really exciting.”

Valdes estimates that it’s one of the 100 largest of the 45,000 meteorites retrieved from Antarctica over the past century.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiec...und-in-antarctica-is-one-of-the-largest-ever/

maximus otter
 
See the meteorite chunk that was found after slamming into Texas

STARR COUNTY, Texas - A piece of meteor that streaked across the Texas sky last week, leading to numerous reports of loud explosions, has been recovered, according to the American Meteor Society.

Residents in South Texas said they felt the ground shake and heard the loud booms on Feb. 15.

A photo shared on Facebook by the AMS shows a smooth, dark meteorite recovered on private property near El Sauz, Texas, by planetary science researcher Robert Ward.

1676919209-nasa-confirma-caida-meteorito-texas.jpg


NASA confirmed that the meteor, which was about 2 feet wide and weighed about 1,000 lbs, hit the ground in South Texas.

Scientists believe the meteor broke into several pieces before hitting the ground.

https://news.yahoo.com/see-meteorite-chunk-found-slamming-200211154.html

maximus otter
 

Apparent meteorite crashes through roof of New Jersey home and damages floor: "It was warm"​

A New Jersey family said they are thankful everyone is safe after an apparent meteorite crashed through their roof on Monday afternoon.

According to a statement released by the Hopewell Police Department, a "metallic object believed to be a meteorite" struck the roof of a ranch-style home. The oblong object, which police described as being about four inches by six inches, went through the roof and ceiling of the home before it "impacted the hardwood floor" and came to a stop.

An image released by police showed the space rock next to a damaged, cracked floor.

Suzy Kop, a resident of the home, told CBS Philadelphia that meteorite landed in her father's bedroom, but no one was home.

"I thank God that my father was not here, no one was here, we weren't hurt or anything," Kop told the station.
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https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meteorite-crashes-home-hopewell-new-jersey/
 
French woman hit by meteorite whilst having coffee outside with a friend:

"I heard a big 'Poom' coming from the roof next to us. In the second that followed, I felt a shock on the ribs. I thought it was an animal, a bat!" the woman, who has not been identified, told the news outlet. "We thought it was a piece of cement, the one we apply to the ridge tiles. But it didn't have the color.""

https://www.newsweek.com/woman-hit-meteorite-france-1813076
 

Man Uses Strange Rock as Doorstop For Decades. It Turned Out to Be Worth a Fortune.​


David Mazurek, a man from Grand Rapids, Michigan, had asked Mona Sirbescu, a geologist at Central Michigan University (CMU) if she could examine a rock he'd had for 30 years – in case it was a meteorite.

MeteoriteRockSample.jpg


For Sirbescu, this had been a regular request throughout her career, yet usually with no exciting outcomes.

But on this occasion, the answer was different.

Not only was it indeed a space rock, but a spectacular one at that.

The object, nicknamed the Edmore meteorite, is a 22lb iron-nickel meteorite with a considerable amount of nickel, constituting around 12 percent.

How the meteorite came into Mazurek's possession is a story in itself.

According to Sirbescu, when Mazurek bought a farm in Edmore, Michigan in 1988, he was shown around the property by the previous owner, and saw a large, strange-looking rock being used to prop open a shed door.

When Mazurek asked the outgoing owner about the rock, he was told the doorstop was actually a meteorite.

The man went on to say that in the 1930s he and his father had seen the meteorite shoot down at night onto their property, "and it made a heck of a noise when it hit".

The next morning, the pair found the crater left by the object, and dug the meteorite out of the newly formed ditch. It was still warm, they said.

The craziest bit? The man told Mazurek that, since the meteorite was a part of the property, it would now belong to him.

And so Mazurek kept the space rock for 30 years, and continued using it as a doorstop – except for the occasions when his kids took the rock to school for show and tell.

Mazurek sold his meteorite to Michigan State University's Abrams Planetarium, pledging 10 percent of the windfall to CMU's earth and atmospheric sciences department, where Sirbescu identified the rock's true identity.

The price tag? $75,000.

https://www.sciencealert.com/man-us...r-decades-it-turned-out-to-be-worth-a-fortune

maximus otter
 

Ancient Meteorite Split Mountain Top In Two, Scientists Confirm​

Untold millions of years ago, a meteorite fell from the sky and hit a mountain range in northeastern China, causing it to split into two peaks. New research claims reveal the structure of the impact site for the first time.
baijifeng-mountain-m.jpg


The crater is located in Jilin province, near China’s border with North Korea. The impact was so large, around 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) wide, that it left two mountain peaks, which are known as Front Baijifeng and Rear Baijifeng.

The team, led by Ming Chen and Ho-Kwang Mao, were attracted by odd sandstone rocks locally referred to as “celestial stones”, which had unknown origins. However, through their analysis, Chen and Mao found something surprising – the name is more than apt.

The rock fragments are made of sandstone and granite, both of which contain small quartz minerals. When struck by heat and pressure, quartz can deform in specific ways. These deformations, the authors explain, are “widely accepted as diagnostic evidence for shock metamorphism and terrestrial impact structures.” Essentially, “shock metamorphism” in quartz can indicate meteorite impact sites.

https://www.iflscience.com/ancient-meteorite-split-mountain-top-in-two-scientists-confirm-70747

maximus otter
 
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