Overview of meteorites and their impact on the earth
Meteorites are fragments of debris from the asteroid belt that penetrate Earth's atmosphere and reach its surface.
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Transcript
NARRATOR: A meteorite is a fragment of spatial matter that falls to the surface of a planet. Most meteorites that fall to Earth come from a part of the solar system located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the asteroid belt.
Attracted by Earth's mass, the rocky, or metallic, fragments enter Earth's atmosphere at very high speeds. They become so hot that they burn up, leaving behind a tail of incandescent debris, commonly called a shooting star. The smallest fragments burn up entirely in the atmosphere, while the larger ones reach the ground. They then become meteorites in the true sense of the word. When it touches the ground, a very large meteorite causes an explosion proportionate to its size. With the impact, rocky debris is sometimes disbursed over several kilometers around the impact crater.
Earth bears traces of more than a 100 major impacts. One of the oldest craters, the Manicouagan Crater in Canada, forms a ring 100 kilometers in diameter. It is the result of a large meteorite crashing into Earth more than 210 million years ago.
Attracted by Earth's mass, the rocky, or metallic, fragments enter Earth's atmosphere at very high speeds. They become so hot that they burn up, leaving behind a tail of incandescent debris, commonly called a shooting star. The smallest fragments burn up entirely in the atmosphere, while the larger ones reach the ground. They then become meteorites in the true sense of the word. When it touches the ground, a very large meteorite causes an explosion proportionate to its size. With the impact, rocky debris is sometimes disbursed over several kilometers around the impact crater.
Earth bears traces of more than a 100 major impacts. One of the oldest craters, the Manicouagan Crater in Canada, forms a ring 100 kilometers in diameter. It is the result of a large meteorite crashing into Earth more than 210 million years ago.