What happens if a meteorite crashes into the earth. Meteorites that fell to Earth: the very best (6 photos)

Cosmic bodies are constantly falling onto our planet. Some of them are the size of a grain of sand, others can weigh several hundred kilograms and even tons. Canadian scientists from the Ottawa Astrophysical Institute claim that a meteorite shower with a total mass of more than 21 tons falls on Earth per year, and individual meteorites weigh from a few grams to 1 ton.

In this article we will recall the 10 largest meteorites that fell to Earth.

Sutter Mill meteorite, April 22, 2012

This meteorite, named Sutter Mill, appeared near the Earth on April 22, 2012, moving at a breakneck speed of 29 km/sec. It flew over the states of Nevada and California, scattering its hot fragments, and exploded over Washington. The power of the explosion was about 4 kilotons of TNT. For comparison, yesterday's power was 300 kilotons of TNT.

Scientists have found that the Sutter Mill meteorite appeared in the early days of its existence, and the progenitor cosmic body was formed over 4566.57 million years ago.

Almost a year ago, on February 11, 2012, about a hundred meteorite stones fell over an area of 100 km in one of the regions of China. The largest meteorite found weighed 12.6 kg. The meteorites are believed to have come from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Meteorite from Peru, September 15, 2007

This meteorite fell in Peru near Lake Titicaca, near the border with Bolivia. Eyewitnesses claimed that at first there was a strong noise, similar to the sound of a falling plane, but then they saw a falling body engulfed in fire.

A bright trail from a white-hot cosmic body entering the Earth's atmosphere is called a meteor.

At the site of the fall, the explosion formed a crater with a diameter of 30 and a depth of 6 meters, from which a fountain of boiling water began to flow. The meteorite probably contained toxic substances, as 1,500 people living nearby began to experience severe headaches.

By the way, most often stone meteorites (92.8%), consisting mainly of silicates, fall to Earth. , was made of iron, according to first estimates.

Kunya-Urgench meteorite from Turkmenistan, June 20, 1998

The meteorite fell near the Turkmen city of Kunya-Urgench, hence its name. Before the fall, residents saw a bright light. The largest part of the meteorite, weighing 820 kg, fell into a cotton field, creating a crater about 5 meters.

This one, more than 4 billion years old, has received a certificate from the International Meteor Society and is considered the largest among stone meteorites of all that fell in the CIS and the third in the world.

Fragment of a Turkmen meteorite:

Meteorite Sterlitamak, May 17, 1990

Iron meteorite Sterlitamak weighing 315 kg fell on a state farm field 20 km west of the city of Sterlitamak on the night of May 17-18, 1990. When a meteorite fell, a crater with a diameter of 10 meters was formed.

First, small metal fragments were found, and only a year later, at a depth of 12 meters, the largest fragment weighing 315 kg was found. Now the meteorite (0.5 x 0.4 x 0.25 meters) is in the Museum of Archeology and Ethnography of the Ufa Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Fragments of a meteorite. On the left is the same fragment weighing 315 kg:

Largest meteor shower, China, March 8, 1976

In March 1976, the largest meteorite rock shower in the world occurred in the Chinese province of Jilin, lasting 37 minutes. Cosmic bodies fell to the ground at a speed of 12 km/sec.

Fantasy on the theme of meteorites:

Then they found about a hundred meteorites, including the largest - the 1.7-ton Jilin (Girin) meteorite.

These are the stones that fell from the sky onto China for 37 minutes:

Meteorite Sikhote-Alin, Far East, February 12, 1947

The meteorite fell in the Far East in the Ussuri taiga in the Sikhote-Alin mountains on February 12, 1947. It fragmented in the atmosphere and fell in the form of iron rain over an area of 10 sq. km.

After the fall, more than 30 craters were formed with a diameter of 7 to 28 m and a depth of up to 6 meters. About 27 tons of meteorite material were collected.

Fragments of “piece of iron” that fell from the sky during a meteor shower:

Goba meteorite, Namibia, 1920

Meet Goba - largest meteorite ever found! Strictly speaking, it fell about 80,000 years ago. This iron giant weighs about 66 tons and has a volume of 9 cubic meters. fell in prehistoric times and was found in Namibia in 1920 near Grootfontein.

The Goba meteorite is mainly composed of iron and is considered the heaviest of all celestial bodies of this kind that have ever appeared on Earth. It is preserved at a crash site in southwest Africa, Namibia, near Goba West Farm. This is also the largest piece of naturally occurring iron on Earth. Since 1920, the meteorite has shrunk slightly: erosion, scientific research and vandalism have taken their toll: the meteorite has “lost weight” to 60 tons.

The mystery of the Tunguska meteorite, 1908

The power of the explosion is estimated at 40-50 megatons, which corresponds to the energy of the most powerful hydrogen bomb. The flight speed of the space giant was tens of kilometers per second. Weight - from 100 thousand to 1 million tons!

Podkamennaya Tunguska River area:

As a result of the explosion, trees were knocked down over an area of more than 2,000 square meters. km, window glass in houses was broken several hundred kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion. The blast wave destroyed animals and injured people within a radius of about 40 km. For several days, intense sky glow and luminous clouds were observed from the Atlantic to central Siberia:

But what was it? If it was a meteorite, then a huge crater half a kilometer deep should have appeared at the site of its fall. But none of the expeditions succeeded in finding him...

The Tunguska meteorite is, on the one hand, one of the most well-studied phenomena, on the other hand, one of the most mysterious phenomena of the past century. The celestial body exploded in the air and no remains of it, except for the consequences of the explosion, were found on the ground.

Meteor shower of 1833

On the night of November 13, 1833, a meteor shower occurred over the eastern United States. It continued continuously for 10 hours! During this time, about 240,000 meteorites of various sizes fell to the Earth's surface. The source of the 1833 meteor shower was the most powerful meteor shower known. This shower is now called the Leonids after the constellation Leo, against which it is visible every year in mid-November. On a much more modest scale, of course.

Sutter Mill meteorite, April 22, 2012

This meteorite, named Sutter Mill, appeared on Earth on April 22, 2012, moving at a breakneck speed of 29 km/sec. It flew over the states of Nevada and California, scattering its hot ones, and exploded over Washington. The power of the explosion was about 4 kilotons of TNT. For comparison, the power of yesterday's meteorite explosion when it fell on Chelyabinsk was 300 tons of TNT equivalent. Scientists have found that the Sutter Mill meteorite appeared in the early days of the existence of our solar system, and the progenitor cosmic body was formed over 4566.57 million years ago. Fragments of the Sutter Mill meteorite:

Meteor shower in China, February 11, 2012

Meteorite from Peru, September 15, 2007

By the way, most often stone meteorites (92.8%), consisting mainly of silicates, fall to Earth. The meteorite that fell on Chelyabinsk was iron, according to first estimates. Fragments of the Peruvian meteorite:

Kunya-Urgench meteorite from Turkmenistan, June 20, 1998

This one, more than 4 billion years old, received a certificate from the International Meteorite Society and is considered the largest stone meteorite of all that fell in the CIS and the third in the world. Fragment of a Turkmen meteorite:

Meteorite Sterlitamak, May 17, 1990

The Sterlitamak iron meteorite weighing 315 kg fell on a state farm field 20 km west of the city of Sterlitamak on the night of May 17-18, 1990. When a meteorite fell, a crater with a diameter of 10 meters was formed. First, small metal fragments were found, and only a year later, at a depth of 12 meters, the largest fragment weighing 315 kg was found. Now the meteorite (0.5 x 0.4 x 0.25 meters) is in the Museum of Archeology and Ethnography of the Ufa Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Fragments of a meteorite. On the left is the same fragment weighing 315 kg:

Largest meteor shower, China, March 8, 1976

In March 1976, the largest meteorite rock shower in the world occurred in the Chinese province of Jilin, lasting 37 minutes. Cosmic bodies fell to the ground at a speed of 12 km/sec. Fantasy on the theme of meteorites:

Then they found about a hundred meteorites, including the largest - the 1.7-ton Jilin (Girin) meteorite.

These are the stones that fell from the sky onto China for 37 minutes:

Meteorite Sikhote-Alin, Far East, February 12, 1947

The meteorite fell in the Far East in the Ussuri taiga in the Sikhote-Alin mountains on February 12, 1947. It fragmented in the atmosphere and fell in the form of iron rain over an area of 10 sq. km.

After the fall, more than 30 craters were formed with a diameter of 7 to 28 m and a depth of up to 6 meters. About 27 tons of meteorite material were collected. Fragments of “piece of iron” that fell from the sky during a meteor shower:

Goba meteorite, Namibia, 1920

Meet Goba - the largest meteorite ever found! Strictly speaking, it fell approximately 80,000 years ago. This iron giant weighs about 66 tons and has a volume of 9 cubic meters. fell in prehistoric times and was found in Namibia in 1920 near Grootfontein.

The mystery of the Tunguska meteorite, 1908

On June 30, 1908, at about 07 a.m., a large fireball flew over the territory of the Yenisei basin from southeast to northwest. The flight ended with an explosion at an altitude of 7-10 km above an uninhabited taiga region. The blast wave circled the globe twice and was recorded by observatories around the world. The power of the explosion is estimated at 40-50 megatons, which corresponds to the energy of the most powerful hydrogen bomb. The flight speed of the space giant was tens of kilometers per second. Weight - from 100 thousand to 1 million tons!

Podkamennaya Tunguska River area:

TASS DOSSIER. On December 6, 2016, a meteorite exploded in the sky over Khakassia. Three flashes were recorded, the hum was heard in the Abakan area.

As stated by Viktor Grokhovsky, a member of the Committee on Meteorites of the Russian Academy of Sciences, professor at the Ural Federal University, the meteorite is several times smaller than its Chelyabinsk “brother” that fell into Lake Chebarkul in February 2013.

Meteorites are solid natural bodies of cosmic origin that fall onto the surface of a large celestial object, such as a planet. They can consist of minerals (stone meteorites), metals (iron) and be of a mixed type (iron-stone).

The Earth's surface reaches 9% of the mass of all meteorites. According to a number of scientists, a meteorite squall with a total mass of approximately 21.3 tons hits our planet every year. According to statistics, only one out of 100 thousand meteorites has destructive power. Most of the meteorites found on Earth have a mass from a few grams to several kilograms.

Most often, meteorites fall in Antarctica: according to experts, about 700 thousand of them are scattered on the mainland. The largest accumulation of meteorites on a limited surface area, discovered in 1979, is also located there. The most massive meteorite - weighing more than 60 tons - was found in Namibia in 1920 g., it received the name Goba.

Cases of meteorites falling on populated areas are extremely rare: only a few such facts are known. Moreover, only twice did falling celestial bodies injure people (1954, Alabama, USA; 2004, UK).

The first reliably recorded meteorite fall in world history dates back to November 16, 1492. This happened near the French village of Ensisheim in the Upper Rhine region. The stone that fell from the sky weighed about 127 kg. His fall was witnessed by numerous eyewitnesses, including the famous German artist and graphic artist Albrecht Durer. He sketched this event on a small wooden board measuring 23x17 cm.

Chronology of five known cases of large meteorite falls in the 20th - 21st centuries

June 30, 1908 over the river basin. A meteorite fell in Podkamennaya Tunguska in Eastern Siberia, which later received the name “Tunguska”. As a result, in the air, when the celestial body entered the dense layers of the atmosphere, an explosion with a power of about 50 Mt in TNT equivalent occurred. The shock wave devastated up to 2 thousand square meters. km. To date, over 5 thousand fairly large fragments of the Tunguska meteorite have been found.

On February 12, 1947, a meteorite weighing more than 23 tons (one of the ten largest in the world) was recorded in the Primorsky Territory. It was named Sikhote-Alin after the name of the mountains over which the meteorite scattered iron rain over an area of 35 square meters. km.

On March 8, 1976, a meteorite weighing over 4 tons fell in northeast China. It was named Kirin.

On February 8, 1969, the Allende meteorite fell in northern Mexico. When it fell, it shattered into many fragments. About 2-3 tons of fragments were collected. Allende is considered the largest carbonaceous meteorite found on Earth.

On February 15, 2013, a meteorite fell in the area of Lake Chebarkul, Chelyabinsk region, which received the official name “Chelyabinsk” (also known as “Chebarkulsky”). The meteor shower was observed by residents of five regions of Russia at once - Tyumen, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Kurgan regions and Bashkiria. Most of the fragments fell into the lake. In October 2013, fragments with a total mass of 654 kg were recovered from Chebarkul; in March 2014, the largest fragment weighing several tons was found at the bottom of the lake.

The Ural meteorite distracted scientists for some time from another space object - an asteroid, which is approaching the Earth at these moments. According to calculations, it will approach its minimum distance to our planet at 23:20 Moscow time. This unique event will be broadcast live on NASA's website. Residents of Asia and Australia, as well as possibly some areas of Eastern Europe, will be able to see the asteroid.

In a little more than 2 hours, the DA14 object will pass by the Earth at a distance of 28 thousand kilometers - this is closer than some satellites fly. If this asteroid weighing 130 tons and with a diameter of 45 meters collided with our planet, the explosion would be equal to one thousand Hiroshimas. There was even an assumption that the meteorite that fell in the Urals could be part of this space monster and that other, larger ones would follow it. However, most scientists do not see a connection with the DA14 asteroid and the Ural meteorite.

“As for whether Armageddon threatens us or not, it is now known for certain. All asteroids larger than one kilometer in diameter that bring such a catastrophe to the Earth on a large scale, they are all known and have well-known orbits, they are all cataloged and observed There is no danger from them,” assured Lidia Rykhlova, head of the department of space astrometry at the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences.

While they were monitoring the large asteroid, they overlooked the meteorite that fell in the Urals. However, it was almost impossible to see it before entering the atmosphere - neither civilian observatories nor missile defense radars can do this - the size is too small and the speed is too high. The military says that even if such a meteorite is discovered, modern air defense systems are not yet capable of destroying such objects. Already in retrospect, scientists derived data from a celestial body that had already fallen in the Urals - mass several tons, speed 15 kilometers per second, angle of incidence - 45 degrees, shock wave power - several kilotons. At an altitude of 50 kilometers, the object collapsed into 3 parts and almost completely burned up in the atmosphere.

“No more than 10 meters in diameter, it flew at supersonic speed and therefore generated a shock wave. This shock wave caused all this destruction, people were injured not by meteorite fragments, but by the shock wave. Now, if a supersonic plane would have passed on the same altitude, for example, God forbid above Moscow, the destruction would have been the same,” said the deputy director of the State Astronomical Institute. Sternberg Sergey Lamzin.

Any space object that reaches the Earth's atmosphere and leaves a trace in it is called a meteorite by scientists. As a rule, they are small in size and, moving in the air at a speed of several kilometers per second, completely burn out. And yet, about 5 tons of cosmic matter fall to Earth every day in the form of dust and small grains of sand. Almost all space guests come to us from the so-called asteroid belt, which is located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

“A kind of trash heap of the Solar system, where all the debris is concentrated. Collisions between asteroids occur in this belt. As a result, certain debris is formed that can acquire an orbit that intersects the orbit of the Earth,” said Mikhail Nazarov.

However, some scientists believe that it was not a meteorite that fell near Chelyabinsk. They are confident that no one will ever find any debris, just as the fragments of the Tunguska meteorite were not found. We are most likely talking about a cooled comet, which consists of frozen gases.

“If the nucleus of a first-generation comet invades the Earth, then it burns up almost completely in the Earth’s atmosphere, and it is impossible to find any remains on the surface. This is similar to the Tunguska phenomenon, when no remains of the body were found, but there was a large fall of forest over a large area and the trees were all heavily charred,” said Vladislav Leonov, a researcher at the Department of Space Astrometry at the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Nevertheless, the search for meteorite remains near Chelyabinsk continues. At the same time, not only rescuers and scientists are searching; now dozens of meteorite hunters have already rushed to the area of the supposed fall. The price of some of them on the black market can reach several thousand rubles per gram.