Impact Event: Tunguska Meteorite and Other Space Objects that Have Struck Earth

Meteorites are classified into various categories.

Stony meteorites that are basically rocks are comprised of silicate minerals, iron meteorites have large amounts of iron and nickel, and stony-iron meteorites contain both metallic and rocky material. Many treasure hunters have made money by finding rare types of meteorites and selling them to museums or private collectors.

When a meteor falls to the ground, it leaves behind a hypervelocity impact crater, sometimes resulting in massive destruction.

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Impact crater of the Tunguska meteorite discovered in 1927 in the Krasnoyarsk territory, Russia.

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Museum visitors touch the Willamette Meteorite during the opening of the Rose Center for Earth and Space, Saturday, Feb. 19, 2000, at New York's American Museum of Natural History. A chunk of the 10,000-year-old meteorite was up for auction, with a Native American group is denouncing the sale.

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Aerial view of meteor crater, 2010.

CC BY-SA 3.0 / Shane.torgerson / Meteor Crater Aerial View 2010

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Fragment of a meteorite in a laboratory of the scientific and educational center "Nanomaterials and nanotechnologies" at the Ural Federal University.

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Trail of a suspected space object that fell in the vicinity of the city of Satka in the Chelyabinsk region.

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A curator from a York museum investigates a 1,5-meter deep hole made by a meteorite in the Hopgrove suburb of York, some 350km north of London, 1 March, 2001. Personnel from the museum and the York police bomb disposal squad unearth the rock, which narrowly missed nearby houses during its descent to earth.

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People look at the "La Concepcion" meteorite at the Ex Teresa Arte Actual Museum in Mexico City, Monday, October 10, 2016. The Meteorite was found in the state of Chihuahua in the 17th century and is displayed with special instruments that create sounds based on the meteorite’s surface irregularities and magnetic field.

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Meteor Crater Road, Winslow, United States.

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Meteorite find on desert floor.

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Houston Museum of Natural Science employee David Temple examines the soil beneath a meteor as workers from the museum dig up the find in a field near Greensburg, Kansas, Monday, Oct. 16, 2006.

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Meteorite craters discovered by scientists in Yakutia.

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This historic IID octahedrite iron piece was preserved in a castle in Bohemia, Czechoslovakia and dates back to ~1400 AD. During its fabled history, attempts were made to melt the mass in a primitive blast furnace. It also survived a 34-year stint at the bottom of a well between 1742 and 1776. Interestingly, the first use of the term Widmanstatten figure in a scientific publication was by Schreiber that published a print of the Elbogen iron made by Alois Beck von Widmanstatten himself. This specimen weighs 8.9 grams and was expertly prepared by R. Kempton of the NEMS.

CC BY-SA 2.0 / Jon Taylor / Elbogen