1cooldude
March 29th, 2009, 03:48 PM
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When an asteroid was spotted hurtling towards Earth last fall, Peter Brown raced to the University of Western Ontario's observatory near London.
He, like his colleagues around the globe, trained his telescope on the truck-sized boulder streaking across the sky. It soon "winked out" as it slipped out of view before slamming into the upper atmosphere and exploding over northern Africa.
Now the asteroid trackers have found the rock's remains strewn across the Nubian Desert, the first time scientists have ever tracked a space rock all the way to the ground.
"This is huge," says Brown, co-author of a report on Thursday in the journal Nature detailing the impact and recovery of asteroid 2008 TC3 that fell to Earth Oct. 7.
"It's one of the holy grails of meteorite and asteroid science" to be able to link a rock in space with its remains on Earth, he says.
It is also shows the international space community can actually predict when and where space rocks are going to hit — in this case, to within seconds of impact, and a kilometre of where it will hit the ground.
more.. (http://www.montrealgazette.com/Technology/scientists+track+rare+asteroid+across+world/1428039/story.html)
When an asteroid was spotted hurtling towards Earth last fall, Peter Brown raced to the University of Western Ontario's observatory near London.
He, like his colleagues around the globe, trained his telescope on the truck-sized boulder streaking across the sky. It soon "winked out" as it slipped out of view before slamming into the upper atmosphere and exploding over northern Africa.
Now the asteroid trackers have found the rock's remains strewn across the Nubian Desert, the first time scientists have ever tracked a space rock all the way to the ground.
"This is huge," says Brown, co-author of a report on Thursday in the journal Nature detailing the impact and recovery of asteroid 2008 TC3 that fell to Earth Oct. 7.
"It's one of the holy grails of meteorite and asteroid science" to be able to link a rock in space with its remains on Earth, he says.
It is also shows the international space community can actually predict when and where space rocks are going to hit — in this case, to within seconds of impact, and a kilometre of where it will hit the ground.
more.. (http://www.montrealgazette.com/Technology/scientists+track+rare+asteroid+across+world/1428039/story.html)