Meteorites, Comets and Asteroids
All about Meteorites Comets Asteroids: Meteorite: Stony, iron, stony-iron metal meteoroid or asteroid metal, Cryovolcanism Shape Dwarf Planet Ceres, Asteroid’s Characteristics, planetary shake-up, asteroid Itokawa, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx, Meteorite bombardment. Asteroid asteroids facts size belt types, answers to questions like: How are asteroids formed? Where are asteroids found? What are asteroids made of? Comets Interesting facts, famous names of comets, halley’s comet, the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud frozen ammonia, methane or water, dirty snowballs and questions like: What are comets made of? Where do comets come from? How big are comets?
-
Jan 24, 2020Detection of ammonium salts may be a further indication that comet impacts may have made life on Earth possible. -
Jan 23, 2020New evidence has confirmed Australia’s Yarrabubba crater as the world’s oldest preserved impact structure - but did it thaw Earth and end an ice age? -
Jan 16, 2020Astronomers have identified where molecules containing phosphorus form, how this element is carried in comets, and how a particular molecule may have played a crucial role in starting life on our planet. -
Nov 23, 2019An international team has found sugars essential to life in meteorites. The new discovery adds to the growing list of biologically important compounds that have been found in meteorites, supporting the hypothesis that chemical reactions in asteroids can make some of life’s ingredients. -
Oct 18, 2019Comets screaming through the atmosphere of early Earth at tens of thousands of miles per hour likely contained measurable amounts of protein-forming amino acids. Upon impact, these amino acids self-assembled into significantly larger nitrogen-containing aromatic structures that are likely constituents of polymeric biomaterials. -
Oct 8, 2019The European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission, which was the first mission to involve a spacecraft following a comet on its journey around the Sun, and placing a lander on its surface, has found clues about how magnetic fields may have helped the Solar System to -
Sep 26, 2019A citizen scientist has discovered two stars with strange dips in their light that are probably hosts to ‘exocomets’, i.e. comets that orbit stars other than our Sun. If confirmed, then these will be the first “star-grazing” exocomets to be found. -
Jul 16, 2019A team of international asteroid and comet experts now agree that ʻOumuamua, the first recorded interstellar visitor, has natural origins. -
Dec 26, 2018NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft completed its 1.2 billion-mile journey to arrive at the asteroid Bennu. -
Dec 13, 2018Recently analyzed data from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission has revealed water locked inside the clays that make up its scientific target, the asteroid Bennu.
