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Monday 13 January 2014

A Car-Wrecking Fortune

A Car-Wrecking Fortune

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Photo credit: Pierre Thomas
In 1992, thousands of Pennsylvania residents watched a flaming green object hurtle through the sky and come to a thundering halt in the trunk of a Chevy Malibu. Aside from the meteorite which fizzled through Russia’s skies in 2013, the Peekskill meteorite, as it was later named, is the most recorded meteorite in history. As it crossed over a high school football game, dozens of parents forgot their children and turned their video cameras to the heavens to get it on film. Sixteen videos later surfaced showing the meteorite’s descent.
The meteorite, which weighed 12 kilograms (26 lbs), was a rare type known as an H6 monomict breccia—it was formed when two massive asteroids collided in space, creating an enormous amount of pressure and heat. Before it hit the atmosphere, it was rocketing through space at 14,000 meters (8.8 mi) per second—by the time it landed 40 seconds later, it had slowed down to only 200 kilometers (126 mi) per hour.
But what about the car? Well, the owner was able to purchase a new one after selling the meteorite for the tidy sum of $69,000.

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