Space rocks crash against Earth carrying compounds that formed billions of years ago. Spaceships make luxury laps in the air, but explode when they retreat too quickly. And sometimes the iguanas fall from the trees and land on the ground, frozen on the ground.
Below is a list of seven intriguing objects and some reptiles that were titular to fall from the sky.
Green and explosive fireball over the Tasman Sea
(CSIRO)
Investigators captured an incredible video when a bright, green meteor stretched over the south coast of Tasmania, Australia, although unfortunately the video is shown in black and white.
A research vessel named Researcher, operated by the Australian National Science Agency, CSIRO, filmed the fireball as it burst into the Earth’s atmosphere, crossed the sky and disintegrated over the Tasman Sea.
People who witnessed the meteorite first hand said it looked green to the naked eye.
A rainbow meteorite is 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 villages of La Palmera and Aguas Zarcas. Now, ongoing studies suggest that the fireball may contain the chemical components of life.
The soft meteor originally broke from a larger asteroid, which formed from the dust of an ancient nebula. This same nebula would later be born in our solar system. The rainbow meteor contains complex carbon compounds, which can include amino acids, which can bind together to form proteins and molecules such as DNA.
The sudden explosion of a SpaceX prototype
(SpaceX)
SpaceX’s Starship program launched a prototype called SN8 during a high-altitude test flight, and everything went as planned, apart from the landing. The prototype took off from the SpaceX, Boca Chica, Texas facility and expanded the sky to 12.5 miles, performing complex aerial maneuvers along the way.
The vehicle then descended to a designated landing mark on the ground, but entered too quickly and burst into flames. The explosion occurred just 6 minutes and 42 seconds after departure.
A meteorite in Michigan
(Heck et al., Field Museum)
A meteorite sank in the sky over Hamburg, Michigan, and the pieces fell on an icy lake below. That was in January 2018; this year, after thoroughly analyzing the space rock, scientists announced that the meteorite contained thousands of organic compounds that formed billions of years ago.
The compounds date back to the early days of our solar system, meaning that meteorites that crashed into young Earth could have carried similar molecules. Then, the organic compounds in the meteors could have been incorporated into primitive microbes, the team said, so studying the Michigan meteor can give us an insight into early life on the planet.
The remains of comets may have leveled an ancient Syrian village
(Jennifer Rice / CometResearchGroup.org)
The prehistoric village of Abu Hureyra, in northern Syria, hosted the first known farmers on Earth, but then a mysterious and fiery incident destroyed the city, leaving mostly remnants of carbon-covered straw huts.
Among the wreckage, excavators also found glass spheres formed from the melting soil, molten samples rich in iron and sulfur and nanodiamonds.
Recently, scientists examined these glass materials more closely and found that they could only have formed at temperatures above 2,000 C (3,630 F). The team concluded that fragments of a passing comet probably exploded over the village and caused an intense heat wave that burned the village and the ground beneath it.
The asteroid that killed dinosaurs attacked at the worst possible angle
(Chase Stone)
The monstrous space rock that wiped out the dinosaurs crashed into Earth at such a strong angle that the dinosaurs never had a chance. The scientists modeled the asteroid’s trajectory and found that it impacted at an angle of about 60 degrees on the horizon.
Compared to the smaller impact angles, this trajectory caused the asteroid to spill about three times more sulfur and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to the model. The gas released by the impact triggered global climate change and killed 75 percent of all life on Earth, including non-avian dinosaurs.
Iguanas raining on floridians
(Chase Stone)
“Cool temperatures with the possibility of reptiles falling”: This is essentially the warning the National Weather Service sends when the temperature drops 4.4 degrees Celsius in South Florida.
This is because when the weather cools, the iguanas that usually hang on top of the trees become too old to hold the branches. As their metabolisms slow down, the lizards become stiff, fall to the ground, and appear dead; but once the weather warms up, they take action again.
This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.