Free Republic

2008 TC3 animation. (Astronomical Institute of Charles University/CC BY 4.0) In 2008, something unique fell out of the sky over Sudan, exploding into fragments across the vast, arid expanses of the Nubian Desert. This hurtling object from above became known as Almahata Sitta: a collection of roughly 600 meteorite fragments, painstakingly recovered by researchers, and taking its name – 'Station Six' – from a nearby train station. What was unique about Almahata Sitta is that it represented something unprecedented in astronomy: the first time an asteroid impact was successfully predicted in advance by scientists. Ever since, the splinters of...

The evidence for this mystery space rock comes from a diamond-studded meteor that exploded over Sudan in 2008. NASA had spotted the 9-ton (8,200 kilograms), 13-foot (4 meters) meteor heading toward the planet well before impact, and researchers showed up in the Sudanese desert to collect an unusually rich haul of remains. Now, a new study of one of those meteorites suggests that the meteor may have broken off of a giant asteroid — one more or less the size of the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt. The meteorite harbored an unusual suite of minerals...