" One afternoon in 1912 a family was eating dinner when they heard a terrific crash outside. Dashing from the house, one boy called, It's raining rocks out here!" When the boy went outside he discovered that a shower of over 14,000 meteorites had just arrived from space.
Picture of Meteorite
Did you know meteors are so bright because small meteoroids come into the Earth's Atmosphere. The air ahead of it quickly becomes so squished and hot, the meteor flashes in the sky.
A meteor is a streak of light that you see when a meteoroid burns up in through the Earth's atmosphere. A meteoroid is when the rock lands on the Earth's surface.
About 40,000 years ago, a huge house-sized meteorite crashed down in the Arizona desert, that made a big hole that was the size of 20 football fields. On October 9, 1992, Michelle Knapp heard a crash outside in her yard. She discovered outside her home in Peekskill, New York a football-size meteorite hit her car. Native people of northern California thought meteors were souls of leaders traveling after their death. On December 20, 2001: A NASA scientist discovered sugar in two different meteorites. Now we have our first evidence that another fundamental building block of life from Earth might have come space. One of the meteorites name is Carbonaceous Murchison.
Carbonaceous Murchison
The largest meteorite known on earth is Hoba West in Namibia in southwest Africa near the town Grootfontein. Hoba West is dark and rusty looking. It's 9 by 9 by 3feet, and it weighs sixty-six tons.
The second largest meteorite known today is Ahnighito Eskimo. That means "tent"-found in western Greenland. Eskimo hunters hammered chunks from the meteorite to shape harpoon tips and knife blades they used for hunting. This shows that meteorites have many uses in some societies. This large meteorite now rests in the Arthur Ross Hall of meteorites in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. It is known to be over 4.5 billion years old, just about the age of earth.
An even older meteorite was found in Northwest Mexico. At 1 am on February 8, 1969. Villagers watched a meteor burn blue-white across the night sky. As it fell, the meteor broke into pieces in a wonderful display of fireworks falling from the sky. It's name was Allende one of its largest piece weighted 2 tons. Allende 's determined age is 4.6 billion years.
