Meteorite

meteorite, any fairly small natural object from interplanetary space—i.e., a meteoroid—that survives its passage through Earth’s atmosphere and lands on the surface. In modern usage the term is broadly applied to similar objects that land on the surface of other comparatively large bodies. For instance, meteorite fragments have been found in samples returned from the Moon, and the robotic rover Opportunity has identified at least one meteorite on the surface of Mars. The largest meteorite that has been identified on Earth was found in 1920 in Namibia and was named the Hoba meteorite. It measures 2.7 metres (9 feet) across, is estimated to weigh nearly 60 tons, and is made of an alloy of iron and nickel. The smallest meteorites, called micrometeorites, range in size from a few hundred micrometres (μm) to as small as about 10 μm and come from the population of tiny particles that fill interplanetary space (see interplanetary dust particle).

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Laboratory, astronomical, and theoretical studies show that most discrete meteorites found on Earth are fragments of asteroids that orbit in the inner portion of the main asteroid belt, between about 2.1 and 3.3 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun. (One astronomical unit is the average distance from Earth to the Sun—about 150 million km [93 million miles].) It is in this region that strong gravitational perturbations by the planets, especially Jupiter, can put meteoroids into Earth-crossing orbits. Not all meteoroids need to have formed in this region, however, as there are a number of processes that can cause their orbits to migrate over long time periods. Fewer than 1 percent of meteorites are thought to come from the Moon or Mars. On the other hand, there is good reason to believe that a significant fraction of the micrometeorites found drifting down through Earth’s upper atmosphere come from comets. Although evidence from studies of meteors suggests that a small fraction of the cometary material that enters Earth’s atmosphere in discrete chunks possesses sufficient strength to survive to reach the surface, it is not generally believed that any of this material exists in meteorite collections. For further discussion of the sources of meteorites and the processes by which they are brought to Earth, see meteor and meteoroid: Reservoirs of meteoroids in space and Directing meteoroids to Earth.

The principal driving force behind meteorite studies is the fact that small bodies such as asteroids and comets are most likely to preserve evidence of events that took place in the early solar system. There are at least two reasons to expect that this is the case. First, when the solar system began to form, it was composed of gas and fine-grained dust. The assembly of planet-sized bodies from this dust almost certainly involved the coming together of smaller objects to make successively larger ones, beginning with dust balls and ending, in the inner solar system, with the rocky, or terrestrial, planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. In the outer solar system the formation of Jupiter, Saturn, and the other giant planets is thought to have involved more than simple aggregation, but their moons—and comets—probably did form by this basic mechanism. Available evidence indicates that asteroids and comets are leftovers of the intermediate stages of the aggregation mechanism. They are therefore representative of bodies that formed quite early in the history of the solar system. (See also solar system: Origin of the solar system; planetesimal.) Second, in the early solar system various processes were in operation that heated up solid bodies. The primary ones were decay of short-lived radioactive isotopes within the bodies and collisions between the bodies as they grew. As a result, the interiors of larger bodies experienced substantial melting, with consequent physical and chemical changes to their constituents. Smaller bodies, on the other hand, generally radiated away this heat quite efficiently, which allowed their interiors to remain relatively cool. Consequently, they should preserve to some degree the dust and other material from which they formed. Indeed, certain meteorites do appear to preserve very ancient material, some of which predates the solar system.