METEORITE - SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
News: Minerals
found in iron-based meteorite in Somalia
What's in the news?
● Researchers
have identified two, possibly even three, new minerals in a huge iron-based
meteorite that landed in Somalia.
● The
minerals have been named elaliite, after the meteorite’s location near the town
of El Ali, and elkinstantonite after Lindy Elkins-Tanton, lead investigator of
a NASA mission to a metal-rich asteroid.
● The
2-meter-wide meteorite has been well known to generations of people who live in
the area, where it was named Nightfall.
Meteorite:
● A
meteorite is a term given to a piece of
a comet or asteroid that falls into the earth’s atmosphere and survives to hit
the surface.
Types of Meteorites:
There
are three main types of meteorites as follows.
Go back to basics:
Meteor:
● A
meteor is the streak of light that you see in the sky when a small piece of
cometary or asteroidal material enters
the atmosphere at high speed and burns up because of the frictional heating from
the piece’s collision with the atoms and molecules in the atmosphere.
Meteoroid:
● Before
a small bit of comet or asteroid enters Earth’s atmosphere, it floats through interplanetary space and
is called a meteoroid.
Meteorite:
● Most
meteoroids that enter the atmosphere burn up completely as meteors.
● In
some cases, however, the meteoroid does
not completely burn up, and the object actually makes it to Earth’s surface.
The chunk that has survived its fiery journey is called a meteorite.