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A meteorite is a portion of a meteoroid or asteroid that survives its passage through the atmosphere and hits the ground without being destroyed. [77] Meteorites are sometimes, but not always, found in association with hypervelocity impact craters; during energetic collisions, the entire impactor may be vaporized, leaving no meteorites.
Meteoritics [note 1] is the science that deals with meteors, meteorites, and meteoroids. [note 2] [2] [3] It is closely connected to cosmochemistry, mineralogy and geochemistry. A specialist who studies meteoritics is known as a meteoriticist. [4]
Once it settles on the larger body's surface, the meteor becomes a meteorite. Meteorites vary greatly in size. For geologists, a bolide is a meteorite large enough to create an impact crater. [2] Meteorites that are recovered after being observed as they transit the atmosphere and impact Earth are called meteorite falls.
Fossil meteorite – a meteorite that was buried under layers of sediment before the start of the Quaternary period. Some or all of the original cosmic material has been replaced by diagenetic minerals. [3]: 320 (It is, however, not a fossil). Fusion crust – a coating on meteorites that forms during their passage through the atmosphere.
Fred Lawrence Whipple first coined the term "micro-meteorite" to describe dust-sized objects that fall to the Earth. [4] Sometimes meteoroids and micrometeoroids entering the Earth's atmosphere are visible as meteors or "shooting stars", whether or not they reach the ground and survive as meteorites and micrometeorites.
Meteorite classification may indicate that a "genetic" relationship exists between similar meteorite specimens. Similarly classified meteorites may share a common origin, and therefore may come from the same astronomical object (such as a planet , asteroid , or moon ) known as a parent body .
A chondrite / ˈ k ɒ n d r aɪ t / is a stony (non-metallic) meteorite that has not been modified by either melting or differentiation of the parent body. [a] [1] They are formed when various types of dust and small grains in the early Solar System accreted to form primitive asteroids.
A meteorite fall, also called an observed fall, is a meteorite collected after its fall from outer space was observed by people or automated devices. Any other meteorite is called a "find". [1] [2] There are more than 1,300 documented falls listed in widely used databases, [3] [4] [5] most of which have specimens in modern collections.