How to recognize meteors

A normal person is easily fooled when he buys a meteorite for a very high price, because they are difficult to distinguish between asteroid and ordinary stone.

>>>Distinguish meteor, meteorite and comet

After the meteorite explosion in Russia, some people searched for meteorite fragments for sale for 3 to 33 USD. Police in Chelyabinsk region, Russia confiscated a "meteorite fragment" from a local man for sale.

Experts warn buyers to be cautious when looking to buy meteorites because they look very much like normal stones.

Meteors understand generalizations are natural objects from outer space, outside the earth. Meteorites vary in size from a few millimeters to thousands of kilometers. International classifies different meteorites like asteroid, meteoroid. Asteroids of large sizes ranging from a few hundred meters to thousands of kilometers moving around the sun are called asteroids (asteroid), while celestial bodies are larger than dust particles, but smaller than asteroids. This is called a meteoroid.

Mr. Nguyen Duc Phuong, Vietnam Astronomical Society said that meteorites have their own characteristics that can be distinguished by the naked eye."The meteorite surface is usually black and glossy. There are also meteorites on the surface that have smooth round indentations, or cracked lines due to erosion and explosion in the air," Phuong said.

Besides, outside of the metamorphic section of the meteorite will see many small internal particles, 1-3mm in diameter.

In terms of volume, meteorites are usually heavier and firmer than regular stones. Meteors usually contain a certain amount of iron, are magnetic, use a magnet to identify,

In color, meteorites are usually black, or blackish yellow due to oxidation.

According to the book of ten thousand questions, why are the main chalks of meteorites being iron and nickel, of which iron accounts for about 90%, nickel 4-8%. The amount of nickel in natural iron on earth is not so much. If you cut the cross section of the iron meteorite and apply nitric acid to it, very special pits appear, like flower cells. This is because the composition of substances in the iron meteorite is unevenly distributed, where there is much less nickel. A lot of nickel is difficult to be corrosive to acid and vice versa, creating veins. This is also a way to identify meteors.

But, according to Mr. Phuong, when someone has a meteorite in hand, it is best to ask an expert to have an accurate conclusion.

Meteors and tectite rocks

These two types are completely different in nature and origin. According to many scientists, tectite rock originated from the earth, unlike meteorites, Dang Tuan Son, HCMC Astronomical Club (HAAC) affirmed.

In fact, the tectite is formed by the impact of meteorites on the earth. According to earth scientists and planetary science, tectides include pieces of material on Earth that are fired during the collision (at the collision location) of extraterrestrial objects.

The chemical and isotopic composition of the tectite shows that they originate from the melting process of sedimentary rocks or rich in silicon dioxide in the earth's crust itself. Besides, according to the method of determining the age of radioactivity, most of the tectites are aged in the range of several hundred thousand to several tens of millions of years - too small for the age of approximately 4.6 billion years of meteorites.

In Vietnam, tectite is distributed in some places like Cao Bang and Yen Bai, concentrated in Lam Dong. They are sold for several hundred thousand dong / kg, depending on size.

Willamette meteorite found in America in 1902. (Photo: Wikipedia)

What consequences can meteorites cause?

According to Mr. Duy, every day, the earth's atmosphere is regularly attacked by hundreds of pieces of dust of sufficient size, mostly smaller than 10 meters, they often break down into many small pieces and burn down before they reach Land and little to the ground. Large objects do not burn out in the atmosphere until they reach the ground, often called meteorites. When the meteorite is on the ground, it is small in size.

With meteorites smaller than 10m most do not cause serious problems when falling to the ground. The relatively large meteorite can have serious consequences. Meteors from 10 to 100m, from 1 to 10km or greater than 10km can cause regional damage, the whole planet and affect or destroy life on earth, because it is large enough to remain a large mass left behind creating a huge collision with our planet's surface. Fortunately, the larger the size, the lower the probability of occurrence.

For 10-100m meteorites, in a few centuries, even tens of thousands of years, once. The meteorites about 1km only account for 0.001%, the frequency of occurrence is about 200,000 years, while the diameter is 10km every 10 million years and up to 15km or more, about 100 million years every year.

Astronomers look for large meteorites because they can be a serious disaster. An object with a diameter less than 50m will burn on the way, but the rest of a stone block with a diameter of 1km when falling to the ground is enough to wipe a city.

Many scientists also believe that the cause of the dinosaurs disappear is due to a large meteorite falling to Earth 64 million years ago and crashing into Central America. The impact bounced off the dust that covered the sunlight for years, killing plants - the food of dinosaurs.

In fact, meteorites that humans keep very little, mainly small meteorites.

Concerning the meteorite explosion in Russia, Mr. Duy said that the shockwave itself broke and blew glass windows in buildings, affecting the mobile phone network, causing injuries to hundreds of people. .