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This Big Eureka is out of this world! This is an actual piece of meteorite that fell to earth 50,000 years ago. |
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The meteorite crashed in Arizona, USA, and originally measured 50m in
diameter. It was travelling so fast it left a crater over one mile wide. |
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Most big meteors burn up in the earth's atmosphere before they fall to the ground. Which is a good thing - imagine something that size hitting you! |
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But smaller meteors called micrometeorites fall to the ground all the time. To try and find one, all you need is a washing up bowl! |
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Micrometeorites are so small they're almost invisible to the naked eye. But
the chances are you're just a few metres away from one right now. Kate and Fearne have been collecting rainwater in their washing up bowls. |
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Micro meteorites usually fall to Earth when it's raining.
So to test what they've got, they filter the rainwater into a bowl through filter paper. |
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Micrometeorites are magnetic, so they keep everything magnetic on the paper by holding a magnet underneath. |
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The particles on the filter paper are so small, they all look
black. But under the microscope you can see that some of them are coloured. |
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Micro meteorites are always black, so anything else (tiny pieces of sand from deserts all over the world and bits of volcanic dust) can be thrown away. |
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What's left is black and magnetic which means that they could well be from outer space! |
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These particles have been tested in a laboratory. They came from outer space and they're 5,000,000 years old. They've travelled billions of miles before landing on Earth. |
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This truck is carrying five tonnes of sand. That may sound like a lot, but forty times that amount of micro meteorites falls to Earth every day! |
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Which means that 200 tonnes of the stuff are making their way to earth every
twenty four hours. So they may be small but there's an awful lot of them out there! |
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Micro meteorites are always black, so anything else (tiny pieces of sand from deserts all over the world and bits of volcanic dust) can be thrown away. |
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