Posts

May 17, 2013

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9:01 PM | Explosion on the Moon! Pock-marked with craters and splotched...

Explosion on the Moon! Pock-marked with craters and splotched with long-cold beds of dark lava, our moon holds thousands of footprints from its violent past. But we don’t really think of it having a violent present. Well, it still gets its fair share of action. On March 17, 2013, NASA astronomers captured video of a meteorite striking the moon. It made an explosion bright enough to be seen with the naked eye, like a temporary star drawn on the lunar surface. It turns out that these collisions […]

May 09, 2013

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6:01 PM | The Water On the Moon Probably Came From Earth

New isotopic analysis of hydrogen in Apollo-era Moon rocks shows that the water locked inside them hails from our planet

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2:54 PM | explore-blog: Remarkable animated visualization of every...

explore-blog: Remarkable animated visualization of every meteorite since 861 AD from The Guardian. (ᔥ Open Culture) This is awesome! It really hits “death from the skies” level near the end. Which, coincidentally, is the name of a book by Bad Astronomer Phil Plait all about the science behind the ways the world might end (and the ways that it most certainly won’t … like Planet X) There’s no reason to think that we really have more meteorites hitting Earth these days, like you see […]

May 06, 2013

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3:30 PM | An Animation Of Every Recorded Meteorite Blast In History

Big One Incoming Carlo ZapponiPeople didn't start really noticing rocks from the sky until after the Enlightenment. Earth is bombarded all the time by space rocks, but people rarely notice them--only 1,042 have ever been seen falling. People didn't start recording these impacts until a couple hundred years ago, and then suddenly, they noticed all the time. Data designer Carlo Zapponi has a lovely new animation, Bolides, showing all these recorded impacts, along with every known meteorite […]

April 30, 2013

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6:17 PM | Big booms over the northland

by Ned Rozell Near a small village in Russia, Marina Ivanova stepped into cross-country skis and kicked toward a hole in the snow. The meteorite specialist with the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and Vernadsky Institute in Moscow was hunting for fragments of the great Chelyabinsk Meteorite that exploded three days earlier. This search was different from others. Ivanova has looked for metallic stones on the world’s great deserts and in Antarctica, places where heavenly rocks stand out […]

April 26, 2013

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1:28 AM | Booming meteor remains hit home in Connecticut

A mysterious booming occurred in Connecticut on Friday, April 19. Houses shook, windows rattled and people said they saw a flash. It turns out this was a meteor and THEY FOUND IT! Officials confirm meteorite hit Wolcott home – CBS 5 – KPHO. Officials at the Yale Peabody Museum confirmed that a meteorite struck a home in Wolcott at the end of last week. “She told me and I made her repeat it like four times because I’m like, ‘A rock?’” said Wendy Taylor. […]

April 24, 2013

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6:05 AM | Asteroid to meteorite

Asteroid to meteorite

April 08, 2013

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4:10 PM | Did This Meteorite Come From Mercury?

A puzzling meteorite with unknown origins: It could be from the surface of Mercury, but something doesn't quite add up. ->

March 20, 2013

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9:28 PM | America's Best Current Defense Against Asteroids Is...Prayer?

Collision Course NASA/Denise Watt via Wikimedia CommonsIf you wanted better asteroid detection, maybe you should have provided some funding, NASA's chief told Congress. How well are we prepared to deflect city-obliterating space rocks hurtling toward Earth? Well, NASA head Charles Bolden told Congress yesterday, "if it's coming in three weeks, pray." Bolden's spiritual guidance came as part of a House Science, Space and Technology Committee hearing on U.S. efforts to prevent asteroid and […]

March 14, 2013

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2:00 PM | Ye Olde Meteroid

In the wake of the Russian meteorite over Chelyabinsk, Russia, Minouette compiled a fascinating look at how objects from space running into our fair planet have inspired art throughout of human history.

March 08, 2013

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2:03 PM | March 8th: Weekly Space Hangout: Geological Implications of Russian Meteor

Podcaster: Fraser Cain, Thad Szabo, Nancy Atkinson, Scott Lewis, Alan Boyle, Amy Shira Teitel, Emily Lakdawalla, and special guest Heather Hanna Title: Weekly Space Hangout: Geological Implications Russian Meteor Organization: Cosmoquest Link : http://cosmoquest.org You can watch the video in: http://youtu.be/NYAkvEMKVDg Description: This week we talk about the geological implications of Russian meteor strike. Bio: Fraser Cain is a publisher in Universe Today ; Thad Szabo from Cerritos […]

February 27, 2013

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1:57 AM | Name That Space Rock The difference between a comet, asteroid,...

Name That Space Rock The difference between a comet, asteroid, meteoroid, meteor and meteorite, by narwhalbot on Flickr. Now you know.

February 26, 2013

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7:29 PM | European Space Agency Decides Which Asteroid They'll Go Smash Into First

Didymos And Its Moon ESA2022 mission to a double asteroid could be a trial run for a deflection mission. A European mission to intercept and deflect an asteroid now has a target: asteroid Didymos. The proposed Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment mission couldn't have had better timing, sounding a call for proposals in the days before a huge meteorite exploded above northern Russia and an even larger chunk of space rock gave Earth a close shave. The European Space Agency has been working […]

February 25, 2013

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5:30 PM | Analysis: Russian Meteorite Was An Everyday Space Rock, Common Throughout The Solar System

Space Rock Fragments Ural Federal UniversityBut it was still notable for its size, and its well-recorded demise in the atmosphere. The giant space rock that exploded above Russia earlier this month spent about 4.5 billion years cruising around the solar system before its fiery arrival in Earth's atmosphere. It was just an average asteroid, albeit a big one at roughly 10,000 tons. Scientists who have been analyzing it at the Urals Federal University say it was a chondrite, the most widespread […]

February 22, 2013

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5:50 PM | Canada to search for near-Earth asteroids

Next week, Canada's newest satellite, NEOSSAT, will blast into space aboard an Indian rocket to search for small asteroids and space junk that could threaten our planet or a spacecraft. As we were reminded last week by the arrival of two asteroids -- one that exploded over Russia, causing widespread damage, and another, larger one that made a close fly-past of the Earth -- we live in a minefield of hazardous objects in space that could strike any time without warning.

February 21, 2013

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5:00 PM | What The Russian Meteor Explosion Sounded Like

Infrasound Array This was one of the infrasound arrays in Greenland that detected the Chelyabinsk meteorite on Friday. CTBTO, via wikimedia commons Last week was a busy one for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, a detection agency set up to identify nations when they test nuclear weapons banned by treaty. On Tuesday, the organization's seismographs detected a rumble in North Korea that could only have been an atomic test. Then on Friday, CTBTO infrasound sensors picked up an […]

February 20, 2013

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6:01 PM | Spectacular meteor hazard in Russia

The recent passage of a massive meteor in Russia is quite a unique and unusual hazard. Hazards from outer space have received some attention from the UK government (who included space weather in the National Risk Register of Civil Emergencies) and elsewhere, but some of the more obvious ones like meteors, comets or even asteroids [...]

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6:00 PM | The 4 Best Conspiracy Theories About The Russian Meteorite

Chelyabinsk meteor trace Alex Alishevskikh, via Wikimedia CommonsLast week's meteorite impact: cosmic coincidence, or a sign of the Mayan apocalypse? Brush up on the nuttiest theories floating around the Web. When something as mundane as a birth certificate is major conspiracy-theory fodder, it should be no surprise that the folks in tin foil hats have already concocted some not-so-obvious explanations for last week's meteorite crash in Russia. Read on for our four favorite space-rock […]

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7:53 AM | Episode 165 – Dung and Dunger

00:00:00 – We start the show off with the announcement that Ryan Brown (of Ep 134) is the newest blogger for the Paleocave! He hops on to tell us about just what he intends to say with his new platform and how he recently plugged us on actual radio. We then immediately follow that up [...]

February 19, 2013

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11:33 PM | Russian Meteor: A Cosmic Flesh Wound

Friday's historic meteor airburst over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, gave the unlikely statistics of being hit by space rocks a very human twist. ->

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3:58 PM | How Amateur Videos Will Help Astronomers Reconstruct Meteorite's Life History

Fireball in the sky! ScreenshotAstronomers can retrace space rocks' paths to find their birthplace. Last April, a minivan-sized chunk of leftover primordial planet punched through Earth's atmosphere at 64,000 miles per hour. The minivan-sized meteor weighed just under 100,000 pounds before it exploded high above northern California, disintegrating into rock dust and smaller meteoroids that fell onto suburban driveways in El Dorado County. Video cameras and weather radar captured the space […]

February 17, 2013

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5:27 PM | CBS Sunday Morning - Hunting for Meteorites

A nice piece was played this morning on CBS Sunday Morning discussing the Russian Meteor of yesterday and linking it to the meteorite hunting that goes on in Antarctica. They mention that the meteorite hunting was little known, but I thought it was common knowledge. I guess that is part of the problem of being so in to geology that I don't realize what other people don't know.

February 16, 2013

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10:50 AM | The Čeljabinsk Airburst of February 15, 2013

The Čeljabinsk airburst of February 15, 2013Yesterday, it was likely the "asteroid day". In addition to the close encounter with the asteroid 2012 DA14, another spectacular event occurred in the early morning (09:20 local time, 03:20 UT) in the central Russia, near the city of Čeljabinsk. In the era of webcams and mobile phones, the video coverage was very impressive (see here a collection of videos). The explosive fragmentation of a small asteroid generated a blast wave that reached the […]

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6:23 AM | Fireball over North California causes a stir

A fireball streaking across the Northern California sky Friday night brought a flood of witness reports -- the same day that a meteor exploded over Russia and an asteroid made a near-Earth fly-by. The fireball was seen around 7:45 p.m., by witnesses as far north as Fairfield and …

February 15, 2013

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10:00 PM | Shouldn't We Have Been Able To See This Huge Meteorite Coming?

Fireball Feb. 15 NEproskochil/via YouTubeSpace rocks are typically tiny and dark. Even if we could spot them, it wouldn't be until they were already upon us, and by then it's too late. Friday morning's meteor, the largest object to strike Earth in more than a century, took the whole planet by surprise. But maybe it didn't have to. There's a chance the space rock that careened into Earth's atmosphere over Russia could have been spotted if the right telescope happened to be looking in the right […]

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10:00 PM | Shouldn't We Have Been Able To See This Huge Meteor Coming?

Fireball Feb. 15 NEproskochil/via YouTubeSpace rocks are typically tiny and dark. Even if we could spot them, it wouldn't be until they were already upon us, and by then it's too late. Friday morning's meteor, the largest object to strike Earth in more than a century, took the whole planet by surprise. But maybe it didn't have to. There's a chance the space rock that careened into Earth's atmosphere over Russia could have been spotted if the right telescope happened to be looking in the right […]

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9:52 PM | The Universe Just Keeps Trying to Kill Us

“Don’t wake me for the end of the world unless it has very good special effects.” -Roger Zelazny It’s always the ones you least expect that get you the worst, it seems. I went to bed last night excited that Asteroid 2012 DA14, a 200,000 ton asteroid, was going to pass within just 28,000 km (or…

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7:34 PM | Trailer Parks and Siberia.

It is an ongoing joke in the United States that trailer parks are tornado magnets. There was even a scientific study done, but the real cause was the fact that F1 and F2 tornadoes will destroy a trailer, but not homes. This has actually led to the improvement in the building standards required for trailers, … Continue reading »

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5:35 PM | Amazing Russian Meteor Videos

Early Friday morning, a streaking meteor illuminated the sky over Chelyabinsk, Russia. Seconds later, meteorite debris pummeled the city, injuring over 900 people. A shcokwave from the meteor's higher altitude explosions also cracked as it reached the ground and shattered glass windows. Below are a few videos of the incident as compiled by redditors "Therecanonlybetwo" and "hattmarington," respectively. The first video shows the meteor streaking across the sky from the view of a dashcam. The […]

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5:30 PM | Geology in the News - Russian Meteorite Impact

A meteorite impacted in Chelyabinsk, Russia today (9:20 am local time) and caused massive damage via sonic booms shattering windows. This left about 1,000 people injured. Below are some of the videos and news reports on the topic. This also has no correlation to the passing asteroid expected later today.This is the only one I have found showing the sonic boom. Some news stories about the […]