"Only those meteoroids that happen to be made of stronger material produce meteorites," she said. This is because most meteorites are believed to come from comets, which are more fragile than asteroids. However, even large meteorite events that originate from asteroids, which can be tracked in space, are unpredictable.įortunately, between 90 and 95 percent of meteors don't survive the fall through the Earth's atmosphere to produce meteorites, Moorhead explained. Generally, astronomers are unable to predict meteorite impacts, largely because meteoroids traveling in outer space are too small to detect. Because of its remote location, the event is an example of a meteorite that would have gone undetected had it not been so large, Cooke and Moorhead explained. The meteorite exploded over the Tunguska River on June 30, 1908, and flattened 500,000 acres (2,000 square km) of uninhabited forest. California-Davis)Īnother major collision was the Tunguska meteorite, which was larger than Chelyabinsk and 10 times more energetic. Several small stones were found in the area after the massive impact. This is a sample of a meteorite that was found following the Chelyabinsk event in Russia in 2013. "So, you don't have to watch for the falling rocks - you have to worry about the shockwave."įor example, the Chelyabinsk meteor - an asteroid the size of a six-story building that entered Earth's atmosphere in February 2013 over Russia - broke apart 15 miles (24 km) above the ground and generated a shock wave equivalent to a 500-kiloton explosion, Cooke said. "What causes the most damage is the shock wave produced by the meteor when it breaks apart in atmosphere," Cooke said.
However, the pieces of rock falling from the sky are not even the greatest concern regarding meteor impacts, Cooke said.
Thankfully, no one was injured during these events. In another incident, meteorites crashed into the back end of a Chevy Malibu in Peekskill, New York, in 1992, Cooke and Moorhead said. When the Grimsby meteorite landed in Ontario, Canada in 2009, for example, it broke the windshield of an SUV. (0.45 kilograms) meteorite traveling upward of 200 mph (322 km/h) can fall through the roof of a house or shatter a car windshield. While it may seem like these tiny pieces of rock wouldn't do much damage, a 1-lb. Most meteorites that are found on the ground weigh less than a pound. "They are not strong enough to survive passage through the atmosphere at 132,000 mph (212,433 km/h) and so never produce meteorites - they are totally vaporized by the time they make it to 50 miles (80 km) altitude." Unpredictable catastrophes a dwarf planet d." Perseids come from Comet Swift-Tuttle and are very fragile, being an ice-dust mix," Cooke said. It revolves around the sun but has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit. A Solar System object that has a sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces, causing it to have a nearly round shape. Venus: thick atmosphere Mercury: fast rotation 6. Three Bears Zone Which analogy corresponds to the characteristics of the following planets? Earth: liquid water Venus: thick atmosphere Earth: liquid water Mercury: fast rotation Venus: thin atmosphere Mercury: slow rotation d. presence of dust presence of energy A region in the Solar System having just the right amount of energy received to make the temperature of a planet neither too hot nor too cold.
cosmic microwave background radiation What makes the solar nebula theory different from the nebular hypothesis? presence of gas presence of rings b. What phenomenon was discovered that helped solve the problem of the origin of this cosmic helium? redshift 2. The big bang theory predicted that the universe was once hot enough for hydrogen to undergo nuclear fusion and form helium. Galaxies move away from each other at an increasing speed. Galaxies move away from each other at a constant speed. Galaxies move toward each other at an increasing speed.
Ove toward each other at a constant speed. How does the universe behave according to the observations of Edwin Hubble? Galaxies m