<
https://theconversation.com/not-just-space-rocks-6-things-weve-learned-about-earth-from-meteorites-and-comets-229288>
"Apart from the Sun, its planets and their moons, our Solar System has vast
amounts of space rocks – fragments left over from the formation of the inner
planets.
A large concentration of asteroids forms a vast ring around our Sun, orbiting
it between Mars and Jupiter. Fittingly, it’s called the main asteroid belt.
Comets are icy bodies of dust and rocks that originated even farther away – in
the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune and the Oort Cloud of debris surrounding the
Solar System.
Extraterrestrial rocks come in many sizes. Generally speaking, asteroids are
space rocks larger than one metre, while the smaller pieces (from two
millimetres up to one metre in size) are known as meteoroids.
Regardless of where they come from, once these foreign rocks make it to Earth’s
surface, we call them meteorites. But they are much more than just simple rocks
from far, far away.
They have allowed us to estimate the age of our planet, and changed the course
of evolution more than once. Here are six major ways meteorites and comets have
contributed to Earth’s history or our knowledge of it."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
