Asteroid Belt and Meteorite Origins (Solar System Formation
2. Greg Brennecka discusses the origins of objects falling to Earth, explaining that the asteroid belt's location is determined by the movement of large planets like Jupiter and Saturn, whose gravitational interactions swept material into specific resonance zones. Cosmochemists can link meteorites back to parent bodies such as Vesta by matching spectral data from probes to laboratory samples, and pieces of Mars also land on Earth, kicked off by space impacts and definitively identified by matching trapped gases to the known Martian atmosphere. Brennecka notes that the massive impact that formed the Moon likely caused the entire Earth to flash-melt, suggesting that if life existed before that event, it would have been extinguished by the heat.
1958
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