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Friday, November 16, 2007 According to predictions, the famous Leonid meteor shower will peak this weekend. The best viewing is predicted to be during the wee hours before dawn on Sunday, when you might see as many as 10 to 15 meteors per hour. But meteor showers are notorious for defying predictions, so don’t discount Saturday and Monday mornings. And don’t be too surprised if the Leonids surpass or fall shy of the predictions. Even though the first quarter moon will light the evening sky, moonlight shouldn’t bother this year’s Leonid meteor display. As a general rule, the fast-flying Leonid...

Volcanic Eruptions, Not Meteor, May Have Killed The DinosaursRajahmundry Quarry. Keller's crucial link between the eruption and the mass extinction comes in the form of microscopic marine fossils that are known to have evolved immediately after the mysterious mass extinction event. The same telltale fossilized planktonic foraminifera were found at Rajahmundry near the Bay of Bengal, about 1000 kilometers from the center of the Deccan Traps near Mumbai. (Credit: Photo courtesy Gerta Keller) ScienceDaily (Oct. 30, 2007) — A series of monumental volcanic eruptions in India may have killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, not a meteor impact in...

A flaming object over Minnesota skies this afternoon may have been a meteor. Shortly after 2 p.m., people across the Twin Cities reported seeing a "metallic" object or "flaming ball" falling from the sky. Broadcasters and emergency dispatchers got hundreds of calls from people who saw the object traveling from the northeast to the southwest. The FAA received no reports of anything falling from any airplanes in the area, leading to speculation that it was a meteor that burned up in the atmosphere, since no crash site has been identified. Residents of Lyon County in far southwestern Minnesota reported a...

A two-topic post. First, you may have heard "Andromeda Strain" type reports of a meteor impact in Peru that reportedly caused illness in 300 people or so. The reports were unclear; some doubted there even was a meteor at all. Well, there was. The linked article in the header is about it; apparently the meteor (meteorite when it hit, of course) hit where the water table was shallow, causing some steaming. Analysis has confirmed the extraterrestrial origin, and maybe about 30 people were bothered by it. This is a summary of the article; read the whole thing for the more...

An object that struck the high plains of Peru on Saturday, causing a mysterious illness among local residents, was a rare kind of meteorite, scientists announced today. A team of Peruvian researchers confirmed the origins of the object, which crashed near Lake Titicaca, after taking samples to a lab in the capital city of Lima (see Peru map). Nearby residents who visited the impact crater complained of headaches and nausea, spurring speculation that the explosion was a subterranean geyser eruption or a release of noxious gas from decayed matter underground. But the illness was the result of inhaling arsenic fumes,...

TOMS RIVER (1010 WINS) -- A fiery streak across the sky got the attention of the Coast Guard Saturday night, after the reported fireball crashed into the waters off the Jersey Shore. Concerned calls started coming in from South Carolina to Long Island about 9 p.m. Coast Guard boats were searching near the site of the reported impact, off Normandy Beach in Toms River, about 10 miles off shore. No debris has been found in the water. The Toms River Fire Department says it also got some calls and there were at least 20 people on the beach with the...

The meteors that are about to rain down in the early morning of September 1 date from around 4 A.D., the latest calculations show. It is not often that we can tell when a shooting star was first released from a comet into space, to travel as a meteoroid in an orbit around the Sun, and finally collide with Earth's atmosphere to shine as a meteor for our enjoyment. Most meteors that sporadically flash across the sky on a dark moonless night date from anonymous times. Only in recent years have we learned to trace young meteor showers, just a...

LOS ANGELES – Summer's annual meteor shower promises to put on a dazzling show when it peaks this weekend – provided you're far from city lights. With no moon in sight to interfere with the Perseid meteor shower, skygazers can expect to spot streaking fireballs late Sunday into dawn Monday regardless of time zone. Astronomers estimate as many as 60 meteors per hour could flit across the sky at the shower's peak. This year's sky show comes with an added bonus: Mars will be visible as a bright red dot in the northeastern sky. “We have front-row seats this year,”...

Rare meteor shower to shed light on dangerous comets 17:07 08 August 2007 NewScientist.com news service Stephen Battersby A rare meteor shower predicted to hit Earth on 1 September should give astronomers only their second chance to study an ancient comet's crust. It could also help them develop a warning system against an otherwise insidious threat – a comet aimed at Earth from the dark fringes of the solar system. September's shower, called the alpha Aurigids, has only been seen three times before, in 1935, 1986 and 1994. The reason for this elusiveness is the shower's unusual origin. Most meteor...

Bits of Halley's Comet will streak into the Earth's atmosphere before dawn on Sunday during the peak of the eta Aquarid meteor shower. Although moonlight will make all but the brightest meteors impossible to see, those that are visible may be quite spectacular due to the geometry of the shower. Halley's Comet last swung by the Earth in 1986 and now lies in the outer solar system. But every time it passes near the Sun on its 76-year orbit, the nucleus of the icy object sheds about 6 metres of material, which spreads out along the comet's orbit. Twice a...

Sorry for the shameless vanity, but I was just outside in the back yard in Northern Georgia, and an incredibly bright light illuminated the dark yard like an arc lamp. I looked up and saw a meteor streaking overhead, white hot, which then broke up into orange, glowing fragments. This happened at 10:21PM EST. I apologize for posting something random like this, but it was astonishing. Perhaps it was a piece of space junk that reentered the atmosphere tonight. Did anyone else see this? It was truly spectacular.

Hollywood got it wrong, this is how you stop an apocalyptic asteroid Richard Gray, Science Correspondent, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:30am GMT 25/02/2007 Attempts to save mankind by smashing asteroids as they head towards Earth may do more harm than good, scientists believe. Rather than Hollywood's preferred option, engineers are trying to develop unmanned rockets that can land on space rocks and use the asteroids' own material to propel them into a safer orbit. The plan will be detailed at a conference, sponsored by Nasa next month, at which its scientists will reveal their -estimate that 100,000 asteroids orbiting near...

SAN FRANCISCO--The fate of humanity might someday lie with a gravity tractor. A gravity tractor, as envisioned by scientists, is a spacecraft that would hover over an asteroid on a collision course with Earth and, through gravitational attraction, accelerate or slow down the asteroid's rate of travel. By altering the speed, the gravity tractor could prevent the asteroid from striking Earth and wreaking environmental and economic havoc. "It is possible to save the Earth from something like an apocalypse" with this kind of spacecraft, said Edward Lu, an astronaut and a scientist with NASA's Johnson Space Center, during a panel...

Scientists Say NJ Object Is Meteorite Friday January 5, 2007 11:16 PM FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) - A mysterious rocklike object that crashed through the roof of a home and landed in the bathroom was a meteorite, experts said Friday. For now, scientists are calling the dense metallic object ``Freehold Township'' after the place where it fell. It's about the size of a golf ball but weighs about 13 ounces, as much of a can of soup. Magnets held near it are attracted to it. Rutgers University geologists Jeremy Delaney, Gail Ashley and Claire Condie and Peter Elliott, an independent...

Geminid meteors seen striking the Moon 17:13 05 January 2007 NewScientist.com news service Kelly Young Two small NASA telescopes with their lenses trained on the Moon spied five, and possibly six, Geminid meteoroids striking the lunar surface early on the morning of 14 December. The observations will help NASA design safe shelters for its future Moon base. On Earth, most meteors burn up as they crash through the atmosphere. The Moon's atmosphere is negligible, however, so the largest of the space rocks crash into its surface with the force of 8-tonne bombs. "We hope to learn how often big rocks...

It's hard to imagine anything more bone-chilling than lying on the ground in mid-December for several hours at night. But if you're willing to bundle up, the reliable Geminid meteor shower is due to reach its peak late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning. The Geminid event is known for producing one or two meteors every minute during the peak for viewers with dark skies willing to brave chilly nights.

The 2006 Leonid Meteor Shower: A Viewer's Guide November 17, 2006 Joe Rao Mid-November brings us the return of the famous Leonid meteor shower, which has a storied history of producing some of the most sensational meteor displays ever recorded. These meteors travel along the orbit of periodic comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, and whenever that comet is passing through the inner solar system, the Leonids have a chance to provide us with a dramatic show. But the most recent passage of the comet to the Sun came back in 1998. We are now well past the favored time frame when, for several...

Source: Geological Society of America Date: October 24, 2006 Far More Than A Meteor Killed Dinos, Evidence Suggests There's growing evidence that the dinosaurs and most their contemporaries were not wiped out by the famed Chicxulub meteor impact, according to a paleontologist who says multiple meteor impacts, massive volcanism in India, and climate changes culminated in the end of the Cretaceous Period. Cottonmouth Creek waterfall over the event deposit with reworked Chicxulub impact spherules. The original Chicxulub ejecta layer was discovered in a yellow clay layer 45 cm below the base of the event deposit. The yellow clay represents a...

BERLIN (Reuters) - A fire that destroyed a cottage near Bonn and injured a 77-year-old man was probably caused by a meteor and witnesses saw an arc of blazing light in the sky, German police said on Friday. Burkhard Rick, a spokesman for the police in Siegburg east of Bonn, said the fire gutted the cottage and badly burned the man's hands and face in the incident on October 10. "We sought assistance from Bochum observatory and they noted that at that particular moment the earth was near a field of meteoroid splinter and it could be assumed that particles...

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - A sonic boom rattled southern New Zealand on Tuesday, and hundreds of callers swamped emergency services about the noise, which scientists said was probably caused by a small meteor plunging toward earth. Residents in the southern city of Christchurch, 190 miles south of the capital Wellington, told police and fire services that the boom shook the ground and their houses. The resident superintendent of the Mt. John Observatory, Allan Gilmore, told National Radio the sonic boom indicated the meteor was traveling "very low" and was probably between the size of a baseball and a basketball. Witnesses...