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Scientists have calculated the rotational speed of asteroid 2024 BX1, which exploded over Berlin earlier this year, by letting it trail in images of the sky. It turns out, 2024 BX1 was spinning faster than any other near-Earth object ever seen...The space rock, dubbed 2024 BX1, turned into a fireball and exploded over Berlin in the early hours of Jan. 21. Although small asteroids on collision courses with Earth are typically detected only when they crash into the atmosphere, scientists spotted this one roughly three hours before impact.That's not the only way 2024 BX1 was unusual, according to a paper...

A team of European researchers says that hundreds of thousands of meteorites, which may provide valuable information about the dawn of life on Earth, are disappearing from Antarctica at an alarming rate. Based on their research, the scientists behind the alarming findings say that as many as three-quarters of the approximately 300,000-800,000 meteorites resting on the surface of the Antarctic ice sheet could be lost by 2050. Published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the research says the culprit behind the wholesale disappearance is the steady rise in global temperature. “For every tenth of a degree of increase in global...

Explanation: A cosmic dust grain plowing through the upper atmosphere much faster than a falling leaf created this brilliant meteor streak. In a serendipitous moment, the sublime night sky view was captured from the resort island of Capri, in the Bay of Naples, on the evening of February 8. Looking across the bay, the camera faces northeast toward the lights of Naples and surrounding cities. Pointing toward the horizon, the meteor streak by chance ends above the silhouette of Mount Vesuvius. One of planet Earth's most famous volcanos, an eruption of Mount Vesuvius destroyed the city of Pompeii in 79...

NEO 2003 SD220 on screen. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ How can humans protect the Earth from "devastating asteroid and comet impacts?" According to the National Academies and their 2023-2032 Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey, ground based astronomical radar systems will have a "unique role" to play in planetary defense. There is currently only one system in the world concentrating on these efforts, NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar, part of the Deep Space Network (DSN). However, a new instrument concept from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) called the next generation RADAR (ngRADAR) system will use the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope...

The eighth-ever prediction of an asteroid impact has delivered some bounty! The discoverer with the little meteorite in hand. Image Credit: Cevin Dettlaff Earlier this week, for only the eighth time ever, an asteroid that actually came with a rare 95-minute warning exploded in the sky over Germany and the hunt began for any potential pieces of meteorite that survived burning up in the atmosphere and fell to Earth. Now, researchers think they have found them. Fragments of asteroid 2024 BX1 about the size of a walnut have been recovered by researchers from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and colleagues,...

Oct. 26 (UPI) -- An Arkansas family who awoke to the smell of fire discovered a smoking hole in their deck -- and they suspect a meteorite may have been to blame. John Devane of Greenwood said he and his family awoke to the smell of smoke inside their house about 3 a.m. and set about searching for the source. They discovered the smoke was coming from a hole in their deck, which had apparently caught fire. Devane said the flames had been extinguished when a corner of the family's hot tub melted from the heat, causing it to pour...

Agriculture in Syria started with a bang 12,800 years ago as a fragmented comet slammed into the Earth's atmosphere. The explosion and subsequent environmental changes forced hunter-gatherers in the prehistoric settlement of Abu Hureyra to adopt agricultural practices to boost their chances for survival. That's the assertion made by an international group of scientists in one of four related research papers, all appearing in the journal Science Open: Airbursts and Cratering Impacts. The papers are the latest results in the investigation of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, the idea that an anomalous cooling of the Earth almost 13 millennia ago...

(Central Michigan University/YouTube) One of the largest meteorites ever recorded in Michigan never came to the attention of experts until a whopping 80+ years after its discovery. Living a humble life as a 10-kilogram (22-pound) doorstop at a local farm, the space rock laid around for several decades before being recognized by the scientific community. "I could tell right away that this was something special," Mona Sirbescu, a geologist at Central Michigan University (CMU), explained in 2018 after investigating the object. "It's the most valuable specimen I have ever held in my life, monetarily and scientifically." VIDEO AT LINK........... David...

Tiny spheres of once-molten metal magnetically dredged from the seafloor could be pieces from IM1, a potential interstellar meteor that struck Earth in 2014 Over the past two weeks, I have circumnavigated the globe by land, air and sea. The reason? A kitchen sink–sized chunk of interstellar material that my colleagues and I believe collided with the Earth at 100,000 miles per hour nearly a decade ago. After years of effort, we may have finally found pieces of this elusive object on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, about a mile beneath the waves. The story began In April 2019,...

VIDEO AT LINK............... June 7 (UPI) -- A British Columbia man said he is trying to determine whether an object that splashed down in his backyard pool was a meteorite. Justin Broad said he was outside his home in Delta earlier this week when something fell from above and splashed into his pool. He said the object, which he suspects may have been a meteorite, was slightly disintegrating in the water. "It didn't cloud up and dissipate. It just dropped to the shallow end right at the bottom in a ball," Broad told Global News. Broad and his wife drained...

Earth has a new moon - or at least a 'quasi-moon', a new study has revealed. A quasi-moon is a space rock that circles the Earth, but is gravitationally bound by the sun. This quasi-moon, called 2023 FW13, was discovered by experts using the Pan-STARRS telescope at the top of the Haleakala volcano in Hawaii, and is one of a handful of known quasi-moons. Experts think the ancient cosmic companion has been in Earth's vicinity since 100 BC and will keep circling our planet for at least another 1,500 years, until AD 3700. Thankfully, neither 2023 FW13 or a similar...

When Suzy Kop entered her father's bedroom on May 8, 2023, she was stunned to find a grapefruit-sized rock next to a big dent on the wooden floor. Upon further investigation, the New Jersey resident saw two holes in the ceiling. It appeared that the stone had struck the floor with such great force that it rebounded and punched a second hole before landing back.

On Monday, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland...said the tremors were "not caused by earthquakes, but by pressure waves from an event in the atmosphere." However, they came from "an unknown source." On Saturday, GEUS said it had received "more than 60" tips from people on Bornholm that "earthquake-like tremors"—described as a deep rumbling, shaking and rattling, changing pressure in the ear—had been reported in the afternoon on Bornholm. No one was hurt. Police said they too were contacted by members of the public about the tremor on the eastern part of the island. Danish media reported that the...

A photo of the suspected meteorite that hit a home in New Jersey on May 8, 2023. Photo courtesy Hopewell Township Police Department/Facebook The week started with a bang for a homeowner in New Jersey after a likely meteorite blasted a hole through a house early Monday afternoon. A metallic rock fell out of the sky and hit a house in Hopewell Township, N.J., located approximately 10 miles north of Trenton. The Hopewell Township Police Department responded to the incident and confirmed that the oblong-shaped rock damaged the building. "It penetrated the roof, the ceiling and then impacted the hardwood...

A team of researchers has discovered five new meteorites in Antarctica—one of which weighs a whopping 16.7 pounds. For about a week and a half, the scientists rode snowmobiles and slept in tents, enduring the cold Antarctic summer temperatures of 14 degrees Fahrenheit as they searched for space rocks in the ice. Their largest find is among the heaviest meteorites ever found on the continent and could provide a glimpse into our solar system’s history. “The object comes from the asteroid belt and probably plopped down into the Antarctic blue ice several tens of thousands of years ago,” Ryoga Maeda,...

Large Antarctica meteorite The large meteorite that's been recovered. (Maria Valdes) ******************************************************************* Antarctica has a lot going for it when it comes to meteorite hunting. The dark rocks stand out against the icy landscape. Its dry climate keeps weathering to a minimum. And even when meteorites sink into the ice they are often returned to the surface by the churning of the glaciers. In spite of these ideal conditions, finding sizeable chunks of space rock is rare. A group of researchers have just returned from the ice-covered continent with five new meteorites that include an unusually large specimen. The big...

A bright fireball was seen over the coast of Ibaraki, Japan at 09:07 UTC on December 8, 2022. The object was recorded by a camera placed on a private home in Hiratsuka, facing northeast. It fell at a speed of 17.4 km/s at an entry angle of 45.8 degrees. The entire event lasted about 5 seconds.

he two brand new minerals were found inside a single 2.5 ounce (70 gram) slice taken from the 16.5 ton (15 metric tons) El Ali meteorite, which crashed to Earth in 2020. Scientists named the minerals elaliite after the meteor and elkinstantonite after Lindy Elkins-Tanton(opens in new tab), the managing director of the Arizona State University Interplanetary Initiative... The researchers classified El Ali as an Iron IAB complex meteorite, a type made of meteoric iron flecked with tiny chunks of silicates. While investigating the meteorite slice, details of the new minerals caught the scientists' attention. By comparing the minerals with...

In 2015, David Hole was prospecting in Maryborough Regional Park near Melbourne, Australia. Armed with a metal detector, he discovered something out of the ordinary – a very heavy, reddish rock resting in some yellow clay. He took it home and tried everything to open it, sure that there was a gold nugget inside the rock – after all, Maryborough is in the Goldfields region, where the Australian gold rush peaked in the 19th century. To break open his find, Hole tried a rock saw, an angle grinder, a drill, even dousing the thing in acid. However, not even a...

Loud fireball spotted over southern Mississippi mostly heard, hardly seen. A fiery meteor streaked across the morning skies in southern Mississippi yesterday, April 27, 2022. More than 30 eyewitnesses in the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi reported seeing a bright fireball at 8:03 a.m. CDT. The sighting was soon followed by numerous reports of loud booms heard in Claiborne County, Mississippi, and surrounding counties. Approximately 22,000 miles out in space, NOAA’s Geostationary Lightning Mappers (GLM) onboard the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) 16 and 17 detected several bright flashes associated with the fragmentation of this bolide, or exceptionally bright...