meteorites

Cultural  

1. Objects from outside the Earth that enter the Earth's field of gravitation and fall to the Earth's surface. Meteors, on the other hand, are objects from space that burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.

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Meteorites are bodies that are left over from the time when the planets formed, and therefore give us clues about the formation of the solar system.

Example Sentences

The Asteroids, Comets, and Meteorites research group at ICE-CSIC has spent more than a decade studying the physical and chemical properties of asteroid and comet surfaces.

From Science Daily • Dec. 25, 2025

In her recent book The Meteorites, she wrote that Morocco was "one of the world's greatest exporters of space rocks".

From BBC • Aug. 9, 2025

Meteorites that formed roughly 1.3 billion years ago and then ejected from Mars have been collected by scientists from sites in Antarctica and Africa in recent decades.

From Science Daily • May 31, 2024

Meteorites are sourced from asteroids scattered across the solar system, which offers us a chance to study those remote bodies without having to send expensive spacecraft.

From Scientific American • Sep. 8, 2023

Ten minutes later, I’m in the museum in my favorite section—the Hall of Meteorites.

From "The Sun Is Also a Star" by Nicola Yoon