Posted on 09/04/2018 12:43:11 PM PDT by BenLurkin
After a catastrophic fire blazed through the National Museum of Brazil on Sunday (Sept. 2), destroying many of the institution's 20 million artifacts, the museum's meteorites were some of the few relics left standing.
Among the space rocks that survived the blaze is the Bendegó meteorite, which is the largest meteorite ever found on Brazilian soil. The iron-nickel meteorite is one of about a dozen meteorites housed at the museum.
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Officials have not yet been able to tally the damages, as investigators have been instructed to hold off on their work until engineers declare the building safe to enter, according to The Guardian. However, one official told The Guardian that an estimated 90 percent of the museum's artifacts have been damaged or destroyed.
In the case of the meteorites, it should come as no surprise that these space rocks seem to be resilient in the midst of a raging fire. Meteors, or fragments of asteroids that enter Earth's atmosphere, can reach temperatures of about 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,650 degrees Celsius) as they plunge through Earth's atmosphere. This is hot enough to melt metals like iron and nickel found in many meteorites, but the temperatures inside a burning building don't get quite as high.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
LOL. Love that someone bothered to write an article about a meteorite - which is probably about the LAST thing one would expect to get burned up in a museum fire!
Does Brazil have a Shirlock Holmes?
A meteor surviving a fire? Remarkable.
Just Wow!Rocks usually don't burn
Click the Pic
That’s a big rock. Be a shame if something happened to it. :)
I think it was Ben Franklin who, back then, wondered why we build our homes out of the same fuel we cook with.
of COURSE its going to survive.
NEWS would be what OTHER more fragile things survived
idiots.
Did you know it was there, before reading this article?
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