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First detected on Feb. 27, the asteroid dubbed 2023 DW is estimated to measure about 165 feet (50 meters) in diameter, or roughly the length of an Olympic-size swimming pool. The asteroid is expected to make a very close approach to Earth on Feb. 14, 2046; as of March 8, the European Space Agency's Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre(opens in new tab) predicts a 1-in-625 chance of a direct impact, although those odds are being recalculated daily. "Often when new objects are first discovered, it takes several weeks of data to reduce the uncertainties and adequately predict their orbits years into...

Large Antarctica meteorite The large meteorite that's been recovered. (Maria Valdes) ******************************************************************* Antarctica has a lot going for it when it comes to meteorite hunting. The dark rocks stand out against the icy landscape. Its dry climate keeps weathering to a minimum. And even when meteorites sink into the ice they are often returned to the surface by the churning of the glaciers. In spite of these ideal conditions, finding sizeable chunks of space rock is rare. A group of researchers have just returned from the ice-covered continent with five new meteorites that include an unusually large specimen. The big...

A bright fireball was seen over the coast of Ibaraki, Japan at 09:07 UTC on December 8, 2022. The object was recorded by a camera placed on a private home in Hiratsuka, facing northeast. It fell at a speed of 17.4 km/s at an entry angle of 45.8 degrees. The entire event lasted about 5 seconds.

he two brand new minerals were found inside a single 2.5 ounce (70 gram) slice taken from the 16.5 ton (15 metric tons) El Ali meteorite, which crashed to Earth in 2020. Scientists named the minerals elaliite after the meteor and elkinstantonite after Lindy Elkins-Tanton(opens in new tab), the managing director of the Arizona State University Interplanetary Initiative... The researchers classified El Ali as an Iron IAB complex meteorite, a type made of meteoric iron flecked with tiny chunks of silicates. While investigating the meteorite slice, details of the new minerals caught the scientists' attention. By comparing the minerals with...

In 2015, David Hole was prospecting in Maryborough Regional Park near Melbourne, Australia. Armed with a metal detector, he discovered something out of the ordinary – a very heavy, reddish rock resting in some yellow clay. He took it home and tried everything to open it, sure that there was a gold nugget inside the rock – after all, Maryborough is in the Goldfields region, where the Australian gold rush peaked in the 19th century. To break open his find, Hole tried a rock saw, an angle grinder, a drill, even dousing the thing in acid. However, not even a...

If forecasters are right, a notorious meteor shower may put on a surprise showing soon, right after its expected peak. The meteor shower in question is the November Leonids. Most years, the Leonids are really nothing to wake up early for, producing an average hourly rate of 10 meteors an hour, barely double the background sporadic rate. But every 33 years or so, the Leonids are the source of great storms of meteors, as the Earth plows headlong into the stream of debris laid down by comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle on its 33-year orbit around the Sun. The orbit of Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle....

In a presentation earlier this month, a team of researchers from The Geological Society of America (GSA)identified nine of what they believe to be the most livable caves on the surface of Mars — spaces large enough that they could give future explorers much-needed protection from the harsh environment of the planet's surface, The New York Times reports. The Red Planet is a hostile place: temperatures can drop to below negative 148 degrees Fahrenheit, the atmosphere is incredibly thin, and there's no ozone layer, which means solar radiation is extreme as well. And that's not to mention the very real...

A newly discovered, "potentially hazardous" asteroid almost the size of the world's tallest skyscraper is set to tumble past Earth just in time for Halloween, according to NASA. The asteroid, called 2022 RM4, has an estimated diameter of between 1,083 and 2,428 feet (330 and 740 meters) — just under the height of Dubai's 2,716-foot-tall (828 m) Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. It will zoom past our planet at around 52,500 mph (84,500 km/h), or roughly 68 times the speed of sound. At its closest approach on Nov. 1, the asteroid will come within about 1.43 million...

PLYMOUTH, Mass. -- A piece of debris came crashing through the roof of a building in Plymouth. Investigators are not sure where the piece of debris came from or what it came from. However, they do know it came from far up because the force of the object falling tore a hole through the roof of a building. Luckily, the object fell into an empty room and no one was hurt. Andrew McWilliams, an employee at Michael’s Warehouse, was shocked when he opened a door in his office to see the debris on the floor. “And that was the first...

The space agency estimates there are about 25,000 asteroids of at least 140m in diameter near Earth's orbit. While the odds of them crashing into our planet at any given time are minuscule, Congress directed Nasa to find 90 per cent of them by 2020. Scientists have found fewer than half. But for reasons it has not publicly explained, the administration has proposed delaying by two years, until 2028, the launch of an infrared space telescope meant to find those threatening asteroids and sharply cutting its budget for next year. About 500 times a year, researchers identify asteroids of at...

In a new study, researchers analyzed some of the tiny fragments of space rock that were left behind after the meteor exploded, known as meteorite dust. Normally, meteors produce a small amount of dust as they burn up, but the tiny grains are lost to scientists because they are either too small to find, scattered by the wind, fall into water or are contaminated by the environment. However, after the Chelyabinsk meteor exploded, a massive plume of dust hung in the atmosphere for more than four days before eventually raining down on Earth's surface, according to NASA. And luckily, layers...

A Compilation of Chelyabinsk Meteor Footage from February 15, 2013February 14, 2015 | David Snodgress

A bright fireball was seen over the southwestern United Kingdom at 20:46 UTC on May 16, 2022. The event comes just five days after a very bright fireball was seen over the same region. Interestingly, both events had very similar trajectories. The American Meteor Society (AMS) and International Meteor Organization (IMO) together with UKMON (UK), Werkgroep Meteoren (NL), and Vigie-Ciel (FR) received more than 800 reports, mainly from England and Wales.2 The ground trajectory computed from the witness reports shows that the meteor was traveling from SW to NE and ended its visible flight over southern England.

The dazzling meteor burned up over the south west of England just after midnight on Thursday, with sightings in South Wales, Hertfordshire and West Sussex. UK Meteor Network (UKMON), which runs a network of 153 detection cameras recording meteors and fireballs over the UK, said the fireball was picked up by fifteen of its cameras at 00:39 BST (23:39 GMT). Over 250 members of the public also reported the event through UKMON's website, after capturing images and footage on their dashcams and video doorbells. Several reports claimed the fireball had a green colour, which may point to the composition of...

Meteorites are not ‘flaming rocks of doom,' NASA says The “bright fireball” was traveling at 35,000 mph when it exploded at 8:03 a.m. with the “energy equivalent of 3 tons of TNT,” according to NASA Meteor Watch, the agency's project that tracks fireball activity. “Existing law states that any meteorites belong to the owner of the property on which they fell; out of respect for the privacy of those in the area, we will not disclose the locations of these finds,” And finding anything of value is likely harder than you think. “The pieces from this object were way too...

Loud fireball spotted over southern Mississippi mostly heard, hardly seen. A fiery meteor streaked across the morning skies in southern Mississippi yesterday, April 27, 2022. More than 30 eyewitnesses in the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi reported seeing a bright fireball at 8:03 a.m. CDT. The sighting was soon followed by numerous reports of loud booms heard in Claiborne County, Mississippi, and surrounding counties. Approximately 22,000 miles out in space, NOAA’s Geostationary Lightning Mappers (GLM) onboard the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) 16 and 17 detected several bright flashes associated with the fragmentation of this bolide, or exceptionally bright...

Rob Waugh Rob Waugh·Contributor Tue, 19 April 2022, 7:56 am·2-min read The fireball streaked above Shropshire last week (Gareth Oakey, UK Meteor Network) The fireball streaked above Shropshire last week. (Gareth Oakey, UK Meteor Network) A huge fireball that streaked across the sky last week may have left a meteorite somewhere in Shropshire, scientists believe. Dr Luke Daly, of UKFAll and the University of Glasgow, said: "We think about 500g of meteorite survived to the ground in approximately four fragments just south of Shrewsbury. "Given the amount of wheat and oilseed rape in the area, we have been literally looking...

A small meteor that hit Earth in 2014 was from another star system, and may have left interstellar debris on the seafloor. An object from another star system crashed into Earth in 2014, the United States Space Command (USSC) confirmed in a newly-released memo. The meteor ignited in a fireball in the skies near Papua New Guinea, the memo states, and scientists believe it possibly sprinkled interstellar debris into the South Pacific Ocean. The confirmation backs up the breakthrough discovery of the first interstellar meteor—and, retroactively, the first known interstellar object of any kind to reach our solar system—which was...

A fireball that blazed through the skies over Papua New Guinea in 2014 was actually a fast-moving object from another star system, according to a recent memo(opens in new tab) released by the U.S. Space Command (USSC). The object, a small meteorite measuring just 1.5 feet (0.45 meter) across, slammed into Earth's atmosphere on Jan. 8, 2014, after traveling through space at more than 130,000 mph (210,000 km/h) — a speed that far exceeds the average velocity of meteors that orbit within the solar system, according to a 2019 study of the object published in the preprint database arXiv. 2019...

The limb, complete with skin, is just one of a series of remarkable finds emerging from the Tanis fossil site in the US State of North Dakota. But it's not just their exquisite condition that's turning heads - it's what these ancient specimens purport to represent. The claim is the Tanis creatures were killed and entombed on the actual day a giant asteroid struck Earth. The day 66 million years ago when the reign of the dinosaurs ended and the rise of mammals began. The BBC has spent three years filming at Tanis for a show to be broadcast on...