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The 60-tonne, 2.7 m-long (8.9 ft) Hoba meteorite in Namibia is the largest known intact meteorite.[1]A meteorite is a rock that originated in outer space and has fallen to the surface of a planet or moon.
A meteor, known colloquially as a shooting star or falling star, is the visible passage of a glowing meteoroid, micrometeoroid, comet or asteroid through Earth's atmosphere, after being heated to incandescence by collisions with air molecules in the upper atmosphere, [11] [23] [24] creating a streak of light via its rapid motion and sometimes ...
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. However, with current scientific knowledge, these types ...
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 .
This is a list of largest meteorites on Earth. Size can be assessed by the largest fragment of a given meteorite or the total amount of material coming from the same meteorite fall: often a single meteoroid during atmospheric entry tends to fragment into more pieces. The table lists the largest meteorites found on the Earth's surface.
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.
Later, smaller impacts on these near-Earth objects dislodged rock-sized meteorites, some of which later struck Earth. On the basis of cosmic ray exposure measurements, it is thought that most HED meteorites arose from several distinct impact events of this kind, and spent from about 6 million to 73 million years in space before striking the Earth.
Meteorites composed of 6 wt% or less nickel are often referred to as hexahedrites due to the crystal structure of kamacite being isometric and causing the meteorite to be cubic. Likewise if the meteorite is dominated by the face centered taenite it is called an octahedrite as kamacite will exsolve from the octahedral crystal boundaries of ...