Today’s trip to the beach included some meteorite hunting.
The incredibly scientific process involved?
Dragging a plastic bag with a magnet in it over and through sand.
Tiny bits and bobs will stick to the outside of the bag and you can collect them by taking the magnet out and turning the bag inside out.
Voila. You’ve got yourself some rocks made out of mostly iron. To check if they are actual meteorites will take looking under a strong magnifier or microscope. If they are perfect spheres, then they’re from space . . . and could be as ancient as 4.6 billion years old.
Why spheres? Because the iron in meteorites gets so hot when it enters the earth’s atmosphere that it melts. Liquids become spheres when they fall freely and, by the time the meteorite particles hit the ground, they have cooled and hardened in their spherical shape.
And that’s out of this world.
(Thanks to the incredible We Dare You for the inspiration!)
Recent Comments