News Planetary Science

The cataclysmic origins of most of Earth’s meteorites have been found

Seventy percent of meteorites can be linked to a just a handful of asteroid belt collisions

A bright light streaks across a starry, rosy-purple night sky on the left side of this image. An array of many radio telescopes are seen in the foreground.

A brilliant meteor blazes through the sky over radio dishes of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in the Chilean Andes.

Christoph Malin, ESO

By Robin George Andrews

Most of Earth’s meteorites can be linked to just a few collisions within the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, two new studies report, including a particularly cataclysmic impact event around 470 million years ago.