meteorites

The Breakdown

That Meteorite Impact Last Week: Did it Really Happen?

A skeptical look at the physics of projectiles from space

Last week we were treated to the unusual story of a human-versus-meteorite collision.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the youth whose hand was in the path of the pea-sized meteor saw a "ball of light." The article also made the claim that the impact with the ground left a "foot-wide crater." Both of these assertions are highly unlikely, as we shall see by simply applying some basic physics to the situation.

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SciKu: Dog Finds Rock From Outer Space

An editor named Bjorn
A dog, a meteorite
a perfect poem

My dog chews charcoal
Wait, it’s a meteorite!
Good girl, have a steak

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The Breakdown

Make A Wish

Popular Science looks at the science of shooting stars

In the first video we see footage of a fireball generated by a large meteor recently sighted careening over the skies of western Canada. Impressively bright! Since we get only a brief glimpse of the action we've also included another amazing video, below, of a meteor streaking over Guadalajara. It's a common misconception that the heat generated from meteors impacting the atmosphere is due to friction. In fact it's due to a thermodynamic process known as adiabatic compression. Let's see how this works.

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Genetic Material Found on Meteorite

A meteorite in Australia has been found to contain component molecules of DNA

Although it's only one part of the answer, we have come another step closer to solving the question of how life originated. Two necessary molecular ingredients of DNA and RNA have been confirmed to have originated from outer space. They join the handful of amino acids we have discovered to have been delivered to Earth on the backs of asteroids and comets.

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Dino Dung Beats Out Space Rock

An exotic meteorite fails to garner interest at an auction, but bidders jump at fossilized feces

In an auction battle between two odd items yesterday at Bonhams New York, a few fossilized pieces of 130-million-year-old dinosaur dung sold for nearly one thousand dollars, but a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite didn't find any takers.

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Why do Aliens Hate Radivoje Lajic?

A Belgrade man says his house gets bombarded by meteorites; wonders who is to blame

Radivoje Lajic thinks aliens don't like him. The Bosnian man says his home has been hit by meteorites no less than five times. He took the rocks to experts at Belgrade University, who confirmed that they are the real thing. But they haven't been able to verify that Lajic did anything to anger the extraterrestrials, or that he's the target of some extra-planetary prank. Still, Lajic seems sure this isn't just a coincidence.

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November 2009: Astronaut 3.0

Inside NASA's astronaut bootcamp and the grueling new training regimen for deep space. Plus, ten young geniuses shaking up science today, one writer's quest to analyze every man-made chemical in her body and more.

Check out the issue's full contents online here

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