Mars Rocks!
January 19th 2012 17:34
Category: Mars
A valuable piece of Martian rock
Meteorites falling to Earth occur on a daily basis, most go unnoticed as they make their fiery re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere.
Some meteorite fragments make it to the ground although a majority burn up in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. On occasions we do get fireballs lighting up the night sky.
Most these fragment and very little make it all the way to the Earth’s surface.
These fragments are the very building blocks of our Solar System they are all that remain after the birth of the planets.
Most of the meteorites that fall to Earth are extremely old dating back
some 4.5 billion years.
We have meteorites that come from the Moon and other planets these meteorites are extremely rare.
Scientists have confirm the meteorites that fell in Morocco last July came from Mars. Scientists have confirmed chemically are the
real deal and are indeed Martian meteorites.
There at most 5 other samples that have come from the red planet.
The meteorites were seen in bright flash of light in the sky last July but they were not discovered on the ground in North Africa until the end of December 2011.
It is entirely probable that millions of years ago a large solid object smashed into Mars and sent rocks hurtling through the solar system.
The fragments continued their long journey through space a journey would have take many tens of thousands of years. Eventually one of those rocks plunged into Earth's atmosphere, splitting into smaller pieces, resulting in some of the fragments landing on Earth.
The last account of a Martian meteorite that was found fresh was in 1962. Some of these Martian meteorites fetch more that gold.
Apart from the monetary value these rocks bring that do have a history and they give us an insight of what the early Solar System
was like.
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