![]() At least one sacred meteorite has apparently survived in the form of the Ka’aba, the holy black stone in Mecca that is revered by Islam as a relic from the time of the Patriarchs-although understandably, no chip from this sacred stone has been subject to detailed chemical analysis. A number of religious texts speak of stones from heaven, which sometimes arrived at opportune moments to smite the enemies of the authors of those texts. The falls of the earliest recovered meteorites are lost in the fog of mythology. Before that, these strange stones were either ignored or considered to have a supernatural origin. Occasional meteorites have been found throughout history, but their extraterrestrial origin was not accepted by scientists until the beginning of the nineteenth century. These rocks from the sky carry a remarkable record of the formation and early history of the solar system. Some meteorites are loners, but many are fragments from the breakup in the atmosphere of a single larger object. ![]() Meteorites fall only very rarely in any one locality, but over the entire Earth thousands fall each year. Explain how the study of meteorites informs our understanding of the age of the solar system.Īny fragment of interplanetary debris that survives its fiery plunge through Earth’s atmosphere is called a meteorite.Explain how primitive stone meteorites are significantly different from other types.Describe how most meteorites have been found.Explain the origin of meteorites and the difference between a meteor and a meteorite.By the end of this section, you will be able to:
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