Earth: 170 Known Impact Craters
	Earth, unlike the other rocky planets in the solar system, is extremely geologically active, constantly shifting and remodeling the surface through plate tectonics shifts, volcanic eruptions and erosion, and mountains formation. This basically means that any evidence of old meteorite and asteroid impacts are mostly hidden away under the surface and underwater. Currently, there are 170 known craters all over the Earth according to ... [read more >>]
	14 April 2008, 08:30GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Bosnian House Gets Bombarded by Five Meteorites in Six Months
	You know what they say: "Lightning never strikes twice in the same place"... but meteorites might! What is the chance of that ever happening? "I am obviously being targeted by extraterrestrials. I don't know what I have done to annoy them but there is no other explanation that makes sense. The chance of being hit by a meteorite is so small that getting hit five times has to be deliberate," says the owner ... [read more >>]
	11 April 2008, 06:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Humans May Be Half-Aliens
	Primitive organic molecules can be found throughout the whole solar system, but they are mostly present in carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. They can also be found amongst the interplanetary dust particles which formed in the early days of the solar system. However, the materials that have the most scientific value for researchers are the organic molecules known to us as amino acids, because amino acids are the building blocks of proteins ... [read more >>]
	28 March 2008, 10:37GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Organic Molecule Found in Space
	In more than four decades of space study, astronomers have been able to identify more than 140 different molecular substances in interstellar clouds of matter, but also in accretion disks surrounding young stars. Many of these substances fall into the 'bio'-molecule category of molecules and are mostly interstellar amino acids, which is extremely important while considering that amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, th ... [read more >>]
	27 March 2008, 10:54GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

UK's Biggest Meteorite Impact Discovered
	According to researchers from the Oxford and Aberdeen universities, about 1.2 billion years ago, a relatively large object entered Earth's atmosphere and fell towards the regions of north-west Scotland, to create the biggest meteorite impact on the territories of the United Kingdom. The exact location of the crater created by the meteorite is thought to lie somewhere near the town of Ullapool, as scientists found evidence of ... [read more >>]
	26 March 2008, 07:49GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Yet Another Meteorite Crater Spotted on Google Earth?
	Yesterday, Dr. Arthur Hickman, a government geologist, announced the discovery of a rare meteorite crater somewhere near Australia, in Pilbara. According to various sources, the scientist managed to discover the crater using Google Earth, the software application provided by Google that allows you to view satellite maps straight from your desktop. Although nobody knows for sure if it’s a fake or not, a new report comes from Dakar ... [read more >>]
	26 March 2008, 06:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Earth Reveals Rare Meteorite Crater
	The one who says that Google Earth is not useful is surely wrong. And today’s piece of news comes to support this statement. Dr. Arthur Hickman, a government geologist, has spotted an impressive meteorite crater while using Google Earth and, as he sustains, he wasn’t looking for such a thing on the downloadable mapping application. According to ... [read more >>]
	25 March 2008, 17:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Asteroids: the Oldest Bodies in the Solar System
	It is widely known that ancient space rocks floating through the solar system are amongst the oldest bodies in the solar system. Meteorites found on Earth are proof for this. However, now astronomers using the Mauana Kea telescope in Hawaii claim to have discovered three asteroids that seem to be the oldest objects in the solar system, even older than the meteorites found on Earth. Jessica Sunshine of University of Maryland, the ... [read more >>]
	21 March 2008, 05:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Museum Retrieves Missing Meteorite Slab
	It may seem rather strange, but meteorites - especially iron ones - with gem intrusions are extremely valuable items for collectors. Some of these space rocks may routinely exceed prices of one million US dollars on the market, while less valued items make their way to museums. Don't even think that thieves will disregard them! Such a story was that of a meteorite slice measuring only 30 by 40 centimeters, valued at about 5, ... [read more >>]
	19 March 2008, 05:39GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

No Primordial Soup Without Meteorites
	Add water, a mix of complex chemical substance, sunlight and you might eventually end up creating life. And don't forget about adding meteorites! Only if things were so easy. Previously, scientists believed that the primordial soup, from which the first living being emerged, was formed of ingredients found only here on Earth. Now, researchers from the Carnegie Institution argue that it might have been more than that, as they have rece ... [read more >>]
	13 March 2008, 11:20GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Meteorite Fragments May Be Dwarf Planet Remnants
	The Earth is continuously bombarded by space rocks and small cosmic bodies, probably swallowing up to a few tens of tons of matter each day. Most of these rocks go unnoticed because they burn high up in the atmosphere before reaching the surface of the planet, albeit from time to time larger meteorites and asteroids penetrate all the way to the ground level. Such examples can be found throughout the history; the last known event took place ... [read more >>]
	13 March 2008, 04:19GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Mysteries of the Peruvian Meteorite
	You might not know this, but in September 2007 a meteorite entered the Earth's atmosphere and eventually reached the ground in a countryside area in Peru, where it formed a small crater, right in front of the eyes of the people living nearby. And this occurred although most of the space rocks hitting our planet usually burn into the atmosphere long before reaching the ground, at altitudes from 50 to 70 kilometers above the ground.[ADM ... [read more >>]
	12 March 2008, 03:49GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Search for Elusive Meteorite Begins Now!
	On the evening of March 5, Wednesday, the Physics and Astronomy Department at Western Ontario University received a number of calls and e-mails from people claiming to have been a bright streak of light crossing the sky sometime around 10:59 p.m. EST. Luckily, the astronomy department is equipped with a network of all-sky cameras specially designed to scan the night sky for evidence of falling meteors, thus becoming the only astronomical i ... [read more >>]
	08 March 2008, 03:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Massive Aerial Meteorite Explosion Over The Northwestern US
	The U.S. Pacific Northwest has just experienced an atmospheric meteorite explosion on Tuesday morning. Richard Pugh, a scientist at the Cascadia Meteorite Laboratory of Portland State University in Oregon, said that the lucky ones could find marble to basketball size space rocks in eastern Oregon. The event was witnessed by 40-50 persons. The sky explosion, falling on an east-southeast direction, took place around 5:30 a.m. PT a ... [read more >>]
	22 February 2008, 04:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Meteorites Bring Life or Death?
	Although most of the time they are associated to death and destruction, asteroids such as the one responsible for the extinction of the marine life 250 million years ago, or that of the dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago, traveling through the immensity of space could have also brought organic materials, necessary for life to appear and evolve, and why not even life itself. Even today some scientists have a difficult time accepti ... [read more >>]
	18 December 2007, 04:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Has the Tunguska Meteorite Been Found?
	On June 30, 1908, the biggest space impact that Earth suffered in modern times, known as the Tunguska event, took place in a remote Siberian area, destroying more than 2,000 sq km (770 square mi) of forest near the Tunguska River (central Siberia). The ball of fire that could have been a comet or asteroid, blasted about 6 mi (10 km) off the ground in the atmosphere with a power similar to 1,000 Hiroshima bomb explosions (20 millions tones ... [read more >>]
	08 November 2007, 04:45GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Further Evidence of an American Armageddon 12,900 Years Ago. When's the Next?
	Only a skilled space driller like Bruce Willis could have saved the mammoths and Ice Age Americans about 12,900 years ago. Scientists tried to explain the mammoths' disappearance by human overhunting, climate change and disease, but there is an increasingly plausible hypothesis stating that a comet or low-density meteorite exploded in the planet's upper atmosphere, causing a devastating wave of destruction that killed most of the ... [read more >>]
	25 September 2007, 04:33GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Mysterious Megacryometeor Crashes Through Roof in Iowa
	A strange megacryometeor fell through the roof of a house in Dubuque, Iowa, starting scientific dispute over its origins. Although some phenomena are known to cause this type of large ice meteorite, so far no valid explanation has been found. Megacryometeors are large chunks of ice (mega = very big, cryo = ice), which are known to form under unusual atmospheric conditions which clearly differ from those of the cumulonimbus c ... [read more >>]
	30 July 2007, 05:32GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Could This Comet Hit Earth in the Next Millennium?
	This comet is one of the few that really spawned some controversy regarding the possibility of a collision with Earth and was even classified as having "a non-zero possibility of impact." This means it could hit our planet or the Moon, sometime around 3044, or at least that is what astronomers thought about four decades ago. There are some problems with this comet, starting from the fact that its trajectory has been found to ... [read more >>]
	17 July 2007, 06:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Meteorite Debris Found by Accident in What Was Once a Giant Crater
	From time to time, scientists get a little bit of help from Lady Luck and when this happens, they discover something amazing. This is exactly what happened after a forest fire more than 450 miles away at Sudbury, Ontario. A group of geologists were forced to find alternative routes for their field trip, since the fire was making classical trails inaccessible and their detour turned out to be a really good idea. Along the Gunf ... [read more >>]
	16 July 2007, 10:20GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Scientists Have Detected the Possible Place of the Tunguska Impact
	The biggest space impact suffered by Earth in modern times is the Tunguska event, when an impact put down more than 2,000 sq km of forest near the Tunguska River (Siberia) on 30 June 1908. It could have been a comet or asteroid blasting in the atmosphere with a power similar to 1,000 Hiroshima bombs explosions (20 millions tones of TNT). Now, a University of Bologna team claims that a lake – located 8 km (5 mi) north-north-west of the ... [read more >>]
	26 June 2007, 07:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Meteorite Struck the International Space Station!
	This week, two Russian cosmonauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) walked out into space and climbed on the station to install deflector shields, in fact protective panels designed to shield the orbiting station from dangerous space debris and small meteorites. During this spacewalk, the two astronauts discovered a bullet-sized hole produced by the impact with a meteoroid – the name given to meteorites while in ... [read more >>]
	07 June 2007, 08:55GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A Piece of Space Junk Fell Through a Roof
	A mysterious silvery space object crashed through the roof of a house. The owners of a New Jersey home were alarmed by the loud noise coming from the bathroom. First, they thought a piece of the ceiling had fallen. Srinivasan Nageswaran and his family were startled to see a chunk of metal that had crashed through the roof and dented the tile bathroom floor. The object was slightly bigger than a golf ball and about as heavy as a can ... [read more >>]
	12 May 2007, 04:33GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Cosmic Collision Left Naked Asteroid to Cool Down
	A cosmic impact between two bodies resulted in a 200 mile-wide iron meteorite, the size of Lake Mead, behind Hoover Dam, left to chill out in space, and which produced roughly 60 smaller ones. It is believed that asteroidal bodies are just leftover debris from the collisions and subsequent melting that happens when planets form. Scientists find that these leftover chunks typically have a dense iron core containing nickel, surrounded by ... [read more >>]
	19 April 2007, 03:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Science Is Precious – Meteorite for Sale
	A meteorite is a natural object originating in outer space that survives an impact with the Earth's surface without being destroyed. Meteorites that are recovered after being observed as they transited the atmosphere or impacted the Earth are called falls. All other meteorites are known as finds. As of mid-2006, there are approximately 1050 witnessed falls having specimens in the world's collections. In contrast, t ... [read more >>]
	16 April 2007, 10:04GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Do Tsunamis Emerge?
	The last one has just occurred in the Solomon Islands, taking with it at least 20 victims. But what's a tsunami? Tsunami (“harbor wave” in Japanese) represents a series of great sea waves provoked by an underwater earthquake, landslide, or volcanic eruption and sometimes by the collision of a giant meteor with the ocean. If there is a sufficient force, a violent movement of the earth will induce a sudden displacement of a hu ... [read more >>]
	03 April 2007, 03:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

California Experienced Its Armageddon
	Without a Bruce Willis to protect, California remained the victim of an Armageddon 35 million years ago. That's the time when a research team believes that a meteorite as big as three football fields hit the golden state. The impact could have made a giant 3.4 miles (5.5 km) wide craterlike formation buried 4,900 - 5,250 ft (1,490 - 1,600 m) below sea level west of Stockton, California. The team dated rocks in the formation r ... [read more >>]
	29 March 2007, 04:09GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Mars' Two Faces, Made by a Huge Impact
	Scientists have noticed a long time ago that Mars' northern and southern hemispheres are very different. While the northern hemisphere is much flatter, it is also lower than the southern hemisphere, with an elevation difference between the two of about 5 km (3 mi). In the 1980s, researchers supposed that the collision with a giant asteroid about 300 km (180 mi) in the planet's early history could have provoked th ... [read more >>]
	16 March 2007, 04:22GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia