Space rocks fall to Earth carrying fertilizers created billions of years ago. Spaceships make flies flutter in the air but explode when they touch back down too quickly. And sometimes, iguanas fall from trees and come to earth, frozen on the ground.
Here is a list of the seven interesting things – and a few reptiles – that made headlines for falling from the skies.
Exploding, green fireball over the Tasman Sea
(CSIRO)
Researchers captured a stunning video when a bright, green meteor flew over the southern coast of Tasmania, Australia – although unfortunately, the video is in black-and-white.
A research vessel called Inspector, run by Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, filming the fireball as it explodes through the Earth’s atmosphere, crossing the skies and then splitting over the Sea Tasman.
People who saw the meteor in person said it appeared green to the naked eye.
Rainbow meteorite found in Costa Rica
(Laurence Garvie / Center for Meteorite Studies / Arizona State University)
A rainbow-colored space rock broke over Costa Rica in 2019 and scattered debris between the cities of La Palmera and Aguas Zarcas. Now, ongoing studies suggest that the fireball may contain chemical building blocks.
First the soft meteor of a larger asteroid, which came out of dust from an old nebula, broke. That very nebula would give birth to our Solar System. In the rainbow meteor there is a complex carbon fertilizer, which may contain amino acids, which come together to form proteins and molecules such as DNA.
The sudden explosion of the SpaceX prototype
(SpaceX)
The Starship SpaceX program launched a prototype called SN8 during a high-end test, and everything went according to plan – except for landing. The prototype was lifted from Boca Chica’s Texas SpaceX facility and moved about 7.8 miles (12.5 kilometers) into the sky, performing complex air maneuvers along the way.
The vehicle then went down to a designated signal on land on the ground, but it came in too fast and exploded the flames. The explosion occurred just 6 minutes and 42 seconds after construction.
Meteorite in Michigan
(Heck et al., Field Museum)
A meteorite went up in the skies over Hamburg, Michigan, and the pieces fell down on a frozen lake below. That was in January 2018; this year, after a detailed study of the space rock, scientists announced that the meteorite formed billions of years ago contained thousands of organic fertilizers.
The fertilizers date back to the early days of our Solar System, meaning that meteorites that fell on the young Earth may have had similar molecules. Back then, organic fertilizers from meteors could be incorporated into primitive microbes, the team said, so a study of a Michigan meteor can give us an insight into early life on the planet.
Comet debris may have melted the old Syrian city
(Jennifer Rice / CometResearchGroup.org)
In the prehistoric town of Abu Hureyra in northern Syria were the first known farmers on Earth, but then a mysterious event, the city fire, destroyed the remains of thatched cottages covered with carbon.
Among the shipwrecks, excavators also found glass fields formed from molten soil, molten samples of iron-sulfur and sulfur and nanodiamonds.
Scientists recently studied these glass materials more closely and found that they could only be formed at temperatures above 3,630 F (2,000 C). The team concluded that fragments of a comet passing through the city appeared to have exploded, releasing intense windmills out of the city and submerging the soil.
An asteroid hit a dinosaur kill at its worst angle
(Chase Stone)
The amazing space rock of the dinosaurs was thrown into Earth at such a steep angle that the dinosaurs never stood a chance. Scientists explained the path of the asteroid and found that it struck at an angle of about 60 degrees above the horizon.
Compared to shallower impact angles, this path caused the asteroid to spout about three times as much sulfur and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to the model. The gas released triggered the impact of global climate change and killed 75 percent of life on Earth, including non-bird dinosaurs.
Iguanas raining down on Floridians
(Chase Stone)
“Cool temperatures with a chance to fall reptiles” – this is exactly the warning the National Weather Service issues when temperatures fall below 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4.4 degrees Celsius) in southern Florida .
That’s because, when the weather is cool, the iguanas that usually hang out in the treetops grow too old to be kept on branches. As their metabolites slow down, the berries go unnoticed, fall to the ground and appear dead; but once the weather warms up, they catch back into action.
This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.