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Imagine sitting with your oldest and dearest friend some time in the not-so-distant future, when you decide to pop open a bottle of perfectly aged cabernet sauvignon. After giving the wine some time to breathe, your friend pours a glass, swirls, sniffs, sips, and says, with a sigh, "My god, it's full of stars." And you point out that it's not stars they're tasting in that wine, but meteorite. More »
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At first glance, the image up top resembles a vast, gleaming oceanscape with a snow-capped island looming in the distance. But if you look closely (click here for a much better view), you'll see that the rippling surface in the foreground is not liquid water, but ice; and that the three dark figures are actually riding snowmobiles. More »
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Many of you have probably heard about asteroid 2005 YU55, the massive rocky body that tomorrow night will collide with Earth in a ball of flames pass the planet safely, albeit closer than any asteroid in the last 35 years. More »
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Here's a bizarre milestone. On June 28, 1911, a meteorite fell over the outskirts of Alexandria, Egypt. The meteorite broke into several smaller rocks, one of which may have reduced a dog to a burnt smear. More »
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Meteors may have seeded the planet with life-giving ammonia. More »
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Since November 2007, six meteorites have hit Radivoje Lajic's home in Gornji Lajici, Bosnia. The meteorites always careen into his home whenever it is raining. Lajici's explanation? Angry aliens are bombarding him for some unknown slight. More »
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Somewhere between 7,500-4,000 years ago, a meteorite fragmented over Estonia's Saaremaa island. The meteorite hit with a force comparable to Hiroshima and left nine impact craters, including the 110-meter Kaali crater. Locals worshiped this hole as holy. More »
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This week, the Royal Society held a two-day seminar to discuss topics of extraterrestrial import. How might aliens behave? Is digital cable screwing up our chances of contacting another world? Our finest minds tackled these and other issues. More »
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Every summer, the Earth passes through the space wreckage left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle. And you know what that means: Meteorites. Early Tuesday morning, after the moon goes down around 1:30 AM, is the best time to see the bits of junk burning up beautifully in the Earth's atmosphere. Everybody knows space explosions are romantic, so stay up late tonight with your sweetie(s) and contemplate astrophysics as you watch hunks of rocks and ice flare up and die, miles over your heads. [Space.com] Image via Marylandweather.com. More »
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On the auction block at Bonham's last week were two strange items: a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite from the dawn of the universe (left), and two chunks of fossilized dinosaur poop (right). Which do you think sold for the most money? More »
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This Martian meteorite, which goes on display today at the Natural History Museum in London, crashed in Egypt nearly a hundred years ago. It was part of the great Martian rockfall of 1911, which started with the appearance of a cloud and some detonations. Local residents were terrified when they were hit with a rain of 40 Martian rock fragments, weighing around 22 pounds. Scientists cracked open a piece of the Nakhla fragment last year and found a carbon-rich substance, evidence that microbes may have lived there. [Image by Cate Gillon/Getty Images] More »
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