Free Republic

Update (16:00 PST Dec. 14th): Eyewitness accounts are becoming more detailed, if you were in the Auckland area at 10pm (December 13th) and you saw something, please let me know (by leaving a comment below). Please give as detailed an account as possible, including your location and the direction at which you saw the meteorite. Hopefully we’ll piece this event together… A fire erupted in an Auckland warehouse shortly after several eyewitness reported seeing a meteorite over the North Island of New Zealand. One witness (named “Mike”) even went as far to say that he watched the fiery object hit...

Washington, Oct 06: A meteorite, which crashed into Australia 40 years ago, is telling researchers new things about how life may have started on Earth, and how that almost universal protein left-handedness came to be. For more than 150 years, scientists have known that the most basic building blocks of life - chains of amino acid molecules and the proteins they form - almost always have the unusual characteristic of being overwhelmingly “left-handed.” The molecules, of course, have no hands, but they are almost all asymmetrical in a way that parallels left-handedness. This observation, first made in the 1800s by...

'Biggest UK space impact found' By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News The impact occurred about 1.2 billion years ago. Evidence of the biggest meteorite ever to hit the British Isles has been found by a team of scientists. Researchers from the universities of Oxford and Aberdeen think a large object hit north-west Scotland about 1.2 billion years ago. The space rock struck the ground near the present-day town of Ullapool, they report in Geology journal. The scientists found what they believe to be debris which was flung out when the impact crater was formed. "If there had been human...

Mysterious Meteorites Stymie Scientists Anne Minard for National Geographic NewsMarch 12, 2008 A pair of mysterious meteorites discovered in Antarctica is baffling scientists who are struggling to determine the origin of the space rocks. The meteorites, dubbed GRA 06128 and GRA 06129, were found in the Graves Nunataks region of Antarctica in 2006 (see an interactive map of Antarctica). The rocks were oddly rusty and salty and smelled like rotten eggs, its discoverers said. Initially, a team at the University of New Mexico (UNM) caused a stir when its analysis hinted that the pair may hail from Venus or the...

How The Peruvian Meteorite Made It To EarthThe Carancas Fireball. Planetary geologists had thought that stony meteorites would be destroyed when they passed through Earth's atmosphere. This one struck ground near Carancas, Peru, at about 15,000 miles per hour. Brown University geologists have advanced a new theory that would upend current thinking about stony meteorites. (Credit: Peter Schultz, Brown University) ScienceDaily (Mar. 12, 2008) — It made news around the world: On Sept. 15, 2007, an object hurtled through the sky and crashed into the Peruvian countryside. Scientists dispatched to the site near the village of Carancas found a gaping...

Astronomers Capture Rare Video Of Meteor Falling To Earth; Hunt For Meteorite ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2008) — Astronomers from The University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, have captured rare video of a meteor falling to Earth. The Physics and Astronomy Department at Western has a network of all-sky cameras in Southern Ontario that scan the sky monitoring for meteors. Associate Professor Peter Brown, who specializes in the study of meteors and meteorites, says that Wednesday evening (March 5) at 10:59 p.m. EST these cameras captured video of a large fireball and the department has also received a number of...

ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2008) — Astronomers from The University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, have captured rare video of a meteor falling to Earth. Astronomy Department at Western has a network of all-sky cameras in Southern Ontario that scan the sky monitoring for meteors. Associate Professor Peter Brown, who specializes in the study of meteors and meteorites, says that Wednesday evening (March 5) at 10:59 p.m. EST these cameras captured video of a large fireball and the department has also received a number of calls and emails from people who actually saw the light.

SPOKANE, Wash. — An apparent meteor streaked through the sky over the Pacific Northwest early Tuesday, drawing reports of bright lights and sonic booms in parts of Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Although a witness reported seeing the object strike the Earth in a remote part of Adams County, in southeast Washington, it had not been found. "I'm convinced it was a meteor," said Geoff Chester, spokesman for the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. "It was a classic description of a fireball." Chester speculated the meteor was the size of a big suitcase and had been orbiting the sun for...

Well water of the tiny Canadian town of Gypsumville, Manitoba (population 65) has been poisoned by an extraterrestrial. The invader: A meteorite which struck down almost a quarter-billion years ago, creating the 25-mile-wide (40-kilometer) Lake Martin impact crater. The ancient impact shattered the granitic ground so that extraordinary amounts of fluoride now taint the well water. Slightly higher than recommended amounts of fluoride can cause mottled teeth, while even higher concentrations can lead to neurological problems and softened bones. This is could be the first time a meteor impact has been tied to a modern health threat, say the geologists...

A fiery meteorite crashed into southern Peru over the weekend, experts confirmed on Wednesday. But they were still puzzling over claims that it gave off fumes that sickened 200 people. Local residents told reporters that a fiery ball fell from the sky and smashed into the desolate Andean plain near the Bolivian border Saturday morning. Jose Mechare, a scientist with Peru's Geological, Mining and Metallurgical Institute, said a geologist had confirmed that it was a "rocky meteorite," based on the fragments analyzed. He said water in the meteorite's muddy crater boiled for maybe 10 minutes from the heat and could...

LIMA, Peru - A fiery meteorite crashed into southern Peru over the weekend, experts confirmed on Wednesday. But they were still puzzling over claims that it gave off fumes that sickened 200 people. Local residents told reporters that a fiery ball fell from the sky and smashed into the desolate Andean plain near the Bolivian border Saturday morning. Jose Mechare, a scientist with Peru's Geological, Mining and Metallurgical Institute, said a geologist had confirmed that it was a "rocky meteorite," based on the fragments analyzed. He said water in the meteorite's muddy crater boiled for maybe 10 minutes from the...

Meteorite makes villagers ill VILLAGERS in southern Peru have been struck by a mysterious illness after a meteorite made a fiery crash to Earth in their area. Around midday Saturday, villagers were startled by an explosion and a fireball that many were convinced was a plane crashing near their remote village, in the high Andes department of Puno in the Desaguadero region, near the border with Bolivia. Residents complained of headaches and vomiting... Farking Excerpt Snippers... A picture of the crater and a link to an article that makes for fun reading after a Google translation. El Nuevo Diario

TOMS RIVER (1010 WINS) -- A fiery streak across the sky got the attention of the Coast Guard Saturday night, after the reported fireball crashed into the waters off the Jersey Shore. Concerned calls started coming in from South Carolina to Long Island about 9 p.m. Coast Guard boats were searching near the site of the reported impact, off Normandy Beach in Toms River, about 10 miles off shore. No debris has been found in the water. The Toms River Fire Department says it also got some calls and there were at least 20 people on the beach with the...

The meteors that are about to rain down in the early morning of September 1 date from around 4 A.D., the latest calculations show. It is not often that we can tell when a shooting star was first released from a comet into space, to travel as a meteoroid in an orbit around the Sun, and finally collide with Earth's atmosphere to shine as a meteor for our enjoyment. Most meteors that sporadically flash across the sky on a dark moonless night date from anonymous times. Only in recent years have we learned to trace young meteor showers, just a...

MOSCOW (AFP) - Russian police were combing the northern Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk on Friday for a three-tonne meteorite that has disappeared from under the nose of its keepers. The giant rock was stolen from the yard of the Tunguska Space Event foundation, whose director said it was the part of meteor that caused a massive explosion in Siberia in 1908, news agency Interfax reported. "It winds up that it disappeared back in June, when the foundation was moving out of its old building," a police spokesman told the agency. "Our colleagues are establishing what got lost, where the rock...

GRAND MARAIS, Minn. - A forest fire has led to a chance discovery of debris from the impact of a meteorite 1.85 billion years ago, more than 450 miles away at Sudbury, Ontario. Geologists had scheduled a field trip in May along the Gunflint Trail in northeastern Minnesota, but most areas they wanted to explore were closed because of a wildfire that charred more than 118 square miles. Geologist Mark Jirsa of the Minnesota Geological Survey went up the trail to scout new locations and, in a spot he had never visited before, stumbled across debris now linked to the...

Sorry for the shameless vanity, but I was just outside in the back yard in Northern Georgia, and an incredibly bright light illuminated the dark yard like an arc lamp. I looked up and saw a meteor streaking overhead, white hot, which then broke up into orange, glowing fragments. This happened at 10:21PM EST. I apologize for posting something random like this, but it was astonishing. Perhaps it was a piece of space junk that reentered the atmosphere tonight. Did anyone else see this? It was truly spectacular.

Scientists Say NJ Object Is Meteorite Friday January 5, 2007 11:16 PM FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) - A mysterious rocklike object that crashed through the roof of a home and landed in the bathroom was a meteorite, experts said Friday. For now, scientists are calling the dense metallic object ``Freehold Township'' after the place where it fell. It's about the size of a golf ball but weighs about 13 ounces, as much of a can of soup. Magnets held near it are attracted to it. Rutgers University geologists Jeremy Delaney, Gail Ashley and Claire Condie and Peter Elliott, an independent...

Mysterious Egyptian Glass Formed by Meteorite Strike, Study Says Stefan Lovgren for National Geographic News December 21, 2006 Strange specimens of natural glass found in the Egyptian desert are products of a meteorite slamming into Earth between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago, scientists have concluded. The glass—known locally as Dakhla glass—represents the first clear evidence of a meteorite striking an area populated by humans. At the time of the impact, the Dakhla Oasis, located in the western part of modern-day Egypt, resembled the African savanna and was inhabited by early humans, according to archaeological evidence (see Egypt map.) "This meteorite...

Meteorite's Organic Matter Older Than the Sun, Study Says Brian Handwerk for National Geographic News November 30, 2006Organic globules found in a meteorite that slammed into Canada's Tagish Lake may be older than our sun, a new study says. The ancient materials could offer a glimpse into the solar system's planet-building past and may even provide clues to how life on Earth first arose. "We don't really look at this research as telling us something about [the meteorite itself] as much as telling us something about the origins of the solar system," said Scott Messenger of the NASA Johnson Space...