The green glow of an aurora is caused by oxygen ions in the upper atmosphere. Some meteors can glow in this way, too, but only if they are extremely fast.
Jonti Horner, University of Southern Queensland et Tanya Hill, Museums Victoria Research Institute
Earth is moving through a bit of space where three streams of debris intersect with our orbit. These streams will give birth to the stars of this weekend’s show.
By tracking a meteorite found in Morocco back to its origin in an asteroid crater on Mars millions of years ago, scientists can learn more about how the planets formed.
When the meteor exploded into pieces above New Zealand, it produced a shock wave strong enough to be picked up by earthquake seismometers. But any fragments have likely dropped into the ocean.
Scientists have crafted the world’s first “treasure map” to reveal Antarctica’s meteorites. These chunks of stone-like material could throw light on the mysteries of our early solar system.
You might think lots of meteorites ultimately come from comets. Turns out, you’d be wrong, according to a new study that tracked meteors hurtling through the sky to find out where they came from.
It looks like a broken barbeque brickette, but the newfound meteorite is a capsule of the Solar System’s history that could reveal the secrets of the origin of life.
A small asteroid will cross Earth’s orbit on November 2. Scientists aren’t sure if the two will collide – but even if they do, there’s still no cause for alarm.
Martian meteorites allow scientists here on Earth to decode that planet’s geology, more than a decade before the first missions are scheduled to bring rocks back home from Mars.
Tomanowos, aka the Willamette Meteorite, may be the world’s most interesting rock. Its story includes catastrophic ice age floods, theft of Native American cultural heritage and plenty of human folly.
It’s established Mars was once a planet with surface-level water. So with multiple MARS missions starting next year, the key to seeking out martian life may instead lie in the contents of its ‘dust’.
A 100-metre-wide asteroid passed just 70,000km from Earth on Thursday, and we had little warning it was about to happen. What threat is posed by asteroids and how do we find them?
Every day about 50 tons of rocks from space fall on Earth. An examination of these meteorites has inspired a new theory about how exactly these rocks formed.