quote: the closest-ever brush on record by a space rock
I guess I've never figured out how they can say things like this (above) when thousands of tiny space fragments (meteroites) make it through our atmostphere every day.
Is there a certain "size" they go by to say "this is an asteroid -- this is a meteroite"?
Any of numerous small celestial bodies that revolve around the sun, with orbits lying chiefly between Mars and Jupiter and characteristic diameters between a few and several hundred kilometers. Also called minor planet, planetoid.
meteorite:
A stony or metallic mass of matter that has fallen to the earth's surface from outer space.
So it's not really a size thing; asteroids orbit around the sun - and they can hit us if their orbits and ours intersect - , and meteorites are those that indeed hit us.
Posts: 4519 | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yeah, "space rock" wasn't a very good choice. Anyway, I've seen worse things when dealing with science in a newspaper article Posts: 4519 | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
