Decoding Meteorites

Rocks falling through the sky can be interesting, and those quick streaks of light indicate for us that a meteor burned up in the atmosphere. Most burn up, and tons of dust lands on Earth. No, they don't know quite how much, but it's a lot. When rocks do not burn up and actually reach the ground, then they're called meteorites. Big ones are rare, so there's no call to be worrying about them.

Meteor image credit: NASA
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Meteorites have a lot to tell us. (No, they don't talk, and if you're hearing talking meteorites, I'll observe you from a safe distance.) We can learn from meteorites by studying them, especially the chemical composition. Secular geologists presuppose that they are the best things to use for obtaining the age of the earth through unreliable radiometric dating methods because they're not from Earth. Creationary scientists also have hypotheses about our planet's age that differ greatly from those of their secular counterparts, which involve stripping away deep time preconceptions and seeing how the observed data match with the biblical time frame.

Have you ever sat gazing at the stars on a clear night when a bright streak flashed across your vision, barreling toward the earth? “Falling stars” inspire wonder and mystery, but at times they also inspire terror.

In the cold early morning of February 15, 2013, a bright fireball exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, causing a sonic boom that damaged thousands of buildings and injured nearly 1,500 people due to shattered glass and other debris. No one saw it coming, a meteor approximately 65 feet (20 m) across and weighing over 13,000 tons (12,000 metric tons)—the largest object to smash into earth’s atmosphere in over a century.

You can read the rest of this very interesting article, or download the audio by my favorite narrator by clicking on "Misunderstood Messengers from Space".
 



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