Most people have looked up into the night sky and seen the fleeting flashes of light that are known as meteors. These flashes are caused by small sand-sized particles that are debris from comets, which melt in the atmosphere and never reach the surface...

Meteors, commonly (and inaccurately) called shooting stars, are particles of interplanetary dust that burn up as they enter the Earth's atmosphere from space. Meteorites are larger pieces of interplanetary matter that are too large to burn up entirely...

The word meteor is derived from the Greek meteron, meaning something high up. Today, however, the term is used to describe the light phenomena produced by the entry of a meteoroid into Earth's atmosphere. A meteoroid is defined to be any solid...

Giuseppe Piazzi discovered the first asteroid, Ceres, on New Year's Day, 1801, then lost it when it traveled behind the Sun. Luckily, a new and valuable mathematical method, least squares, allowed Ceres to be rediscovered. This success...

A meteorite is a natural object originating in outer space that survives an impact with the Earth's surface without being destroyed. While in space it is called a meteoroid. When it enters the atmosphere, air resistance causes the body to heat up and...

The theologians are already falling all over themselves {Religion, Aug. 10} to assure us that the possible discovery of extraterrestrial life is no big deal to them. Horsefeathers! If confirmed, this discovery presents serious questions for most religions and profound problems for those,...

Researchers say they have found compelling evidence that meteorites sometimes fall to Earth in streams. Their report, greeted with skepticism by some experts, bucks the traditional view of how these rocky bodies, which typically represent fragments of an asteroid, make their way to...

The Willamette Meteorite is a sacred icon to the Oregon-based Clackamas Indians. The tribe has its own name for the massive space rock, Tomanowas, and holds an annual religious ceremony with the meteorite in its home at the American Museum of Natural History.Now a chunk...

A fiery meteorite crashed into southern Peru over the weekend, experts confirmed on Wednesday. But they were still puzzling over claims that it gave off fumes that sickened 200 people.Local residents told reporters that a fiery ball fell from the sky and smashed into the...