Space rocks fall to the earth with compounds formed billions of years ago. Spaceships perform noisy turns in the air, but explode if they touch too fast. And sometimes iguanas fall off trees and end up on the ground.
Here’s a list of seven interesting objects – and some reptiles – that made headlines for falling from the sky.
Exploding, green fireball over the Tasman Sea
(CSIRO)
Researchers captured an incredible video when a bright, green meteor flashed over the south coast of Tasmania, Australia – although the video is unfortunately slightly black-and-white.
A research vessel called Investigator, operated by the Australian National Science Agency, CSIRO, filmed the fireball as it burst through Earth’s atmosphere, crossing the sky and then crumbling above the Tasman Sea.
People who saw the meteor firsthand said it looked green to the naked eye.
Rainbow meteorite found in Costa Rica
(Laurence Garvie / Center for Meteorite Studies / Arizona State University)
A space rock of rainbow color broke up over Costa Rica in 2019, scattering debris between the towns of La Palmera and Aguas Zarcas. Now, ongoing studies suggest that the fireball may contain the chemical building blocks of life.
The soft meteor originally broke off from a larger asteroid that formed from dust from an old nebula. That nebula would later produce our solar system. The rainbow meteor contains complex carbon compounds, which can include amino acids, which can come together to form proteins and molecules such as DNA.
The sudden explosion of a SpaceX prototype
(SpaceX)
SpaceX’s Starship program launched a prototype called SN8 during a high-flying test flight, and everything went according to plan – except for the landing. The prototype took off from SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas, zoomed in about 12.5 kilometers into the air and performed intricate aerial maneuvers along the way.
The vehicle then descended on a designated landing mark on the ground, but it came in too fast and caught fire. The blast occurred just 6 minutes and 42 seconds after it took off.
A meteorite in Michigan
(Heck et al., Field Museum)
A meteorite struck the sky over Hamburg, Michigan, and the pieces fell on a frozen lake below. This was in January 2018; this year, after thoroughly analyzing the space rock, scientists have announced that the meteorite contains thousands of organic compounds that formed billions of years ago.
The compounds date from the early days of our solar system, meaning that meteorites that crashed on the young earth could carry similar molecules. At the time, organic compounds from meteors could have been incorporated into primitive microbes, the team said. Studying the meteor in Michigan can give us a glimpse of early life on the planet.
Comet waste may have leveled an old Syrian town
(Jennifer Rice / CometResearchGroup.org)
The prehistoric village of Abu Hureyra in northern Syria housed the first known farmers on Earth, but then the city destroyed some mysterious, fiery incident, with mostly remnants of thatched roofs covered in carbon.
Among the wreckage, excavators also found glass spheres formed from melting soil, molten iron- and sulfur-rich samples and nanodiamonds.
Scientists recently examined these glassy materials more closely and found that they could only have formed at temperatures above 3,630 F (2000 C). The team concluded that fragments of a passing comet probably exploded over the town and released an intense heat wave that scorched the town and the ground beneath it.
Asteroid that kills the dinosaur hit the worst possible angle
(Chase Stone)
The monstrous space rock that wiped out the dinosaurs penetrated the earth at such a steep angle that the dinos never really had a chance. Scientists modeled the path of the asteroid and found that it struck at an angle of about 60 degrees above the horizon.
Compared to shallower impact angles, this orbit, according to the model, caused the asteroid to emit about three times as much sulfur and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The gas released by the impact caused global climate change, killing 75 percent of all life on earth, including all non-bird dinosaurs.
Iguanas rain on Floridians
(Chase Stone)
‘Cool temperatures with the chance of reptiles falling’ – this is essentially the warning that the National Weather Service sends out when the temperature in southern Florida drops below 4.4 degrees Celsius.
This is because the iguanas that usually hang out in the treetops are getting too old to hold branches. As their metabolism slows down, the lizards stiffen, fall to the ground and look dead; but as soon as the weather warms up, they begin to take action again.
This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.