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The theme increased in popularity from the 1950s onward, possibly as a result of nuclear anxiety following World War II, [4] and received additional boosts in popularity in 1980 with the publication of the Alvarez hypothesis, which states that the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was caused by an asteroid impact that created the ...
At 1 AU meteoroids bigger than 1 mm in size are in a collisional steady state. The significant excess of smaller meteoroids is due to the input from comets. Models of the interplanetary dust environment of the Earth result in 80-90% of cometary dust vs. only 10-20% of asteroidal dust.
Antimatter comets and antimatter meteoroids are hypothetical comets and meteoroids composed solely of antimatter instead of ordinary matter.Although never actually observed, and unlikely to exist anywhere within the Milky Way, they have been hypothesized to exist, and their existence, on the presumption that hypothesis is correct, has been put forward as one possible explanation for various ...
Over the period 1864–1866 the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli computed the orbit of the Perseid meteors, and based on orbital similarities, correctly hypothesized that the Perseids were fragments of Comet Swift–Tuttle. The link between comets and meteor showers was dramatically underscored when in 1872, a major meteor shower ...
Traditionally, small bodies orbiting the Sun were classified as comets, asteroids, or meteoroids, with anything smaller than one meter across being called a meteoroid. The term asteroid, never officially defined, [11] can be informally used to mean "an irregularly shaped rocky body orbiting the Sun that does not qualify as a planet or a dwarf ...
A meteorite is a portion of a meteoroid or asteroid that survives its passage through the atmosphere and hits the ground without being destroyed. [22] 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.
A meteoroid is a small piece of an asteroid or comet. Meteoroids are usually the size of a pebble but can range in size from dust grains to small asteroids. Asteroids can range in size from ...
[4] [6] It gained prominence following the publication of Russian science fiction writer Alexander Kazantsev's 1946 short story "Explosion"; [4] [5] [7] inspired by the similarities between the event and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, Kazantsev's story posits that a nuclear explosion in the engine of a spacecraft was responsible.