Meteorites are pieces of space debris that enter Earth’s atmosphere and burn up. They can range in size from a grain of sand to a house, and can cause a variety of impacts when dropped to the ground.
Where do meteorites come from?
Most meteorites come from the asteroid belt, which is a region of space between Mars and Jupiter, and because they are small rocky bodies, when an asteroid collides with another, it can break pieces of rocks that are scattered in space, and some of these rocks enter the Earth’s atmosphere.
The most prominent meteorites injuries
One of the most spectacular meteorite hits in recent history occurred in Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, when a meteorite the size of a refrigerator entered the atmosphere, causing a huge explosion, smashing windows and damaging buildings in the city.
As for the most powerful meteorite in the modern era, it dates back to 1908 in Tunguska, Siberia, northern Russia, where a mountain-sized meteorite exploded in the atmosphere, leveling an area of more than 2,000 square kilometers.
The blast was so powerful that it could be heard for hundreds of miles, and is estimated to have released energy equivalent to 10 megatons of TNT.
In any case, the Tunguska meteorite is not the strongest in the history of the Earth, but the Chicxulub meteorite in Mexico, which hit the Earth about 66 million years ago, was the size of a mountain and caused the so-called great extinction, and its most prominent victims were the dinosaurs.
Meteorites are an interesting part of our solar system, although they can sometimes be devastating, but they can certainly contribute a great role to our knowledge about the origin and origin of our dazzling universe.
