lpetrich
Contributor
Lady Lakdawalla of Baltis Vallis on Twitter: "TIL! We have way more material on Earth from the asteroid Vesta than from the Moon. (Of course, for the Apollo lunar samples, we *know* where we picked up the rocks, which is super extra valuable, but still...that's a lot of Vesta.)" / Twitter
noting
Christina Viviano on Twitter: "@asrivkin @elakdawalla This is a great graphic from (link)" / Twitter
noting
Using HED meteorites to interpret neutron and gamma‐ray data from asteroid 4 Vesta - Beck - 2015 - Meteoritics & Planetary Science - Wiley Online Library
The numbers:
Meteorites from Mars: 128.4 kg
HED meteorite). These were tracked down to the Vesta with their infrared spectra, an identification that was essentially confirmed when the Dawn spacecraft visited that asteroid. They have the odd feature of being igneous rocks, rocks that solidified from a liquid state. So early in the Solar System's history, Vesta had gotten hot enough to melt its rocks, likely from the decay of Al-26.
HED meteorites are in 5% of all meteorite falls, pointing to 30 metric tons of recovered meteorites. Most meteorites' place of origin cannot be identified as precisely as these ones, but many of them have infrared spectra similar to those of many asteroids.
We receive electrons and ions in the solar wind and in cosmic rays. Some of the latter are *very* energetic, with energies up to 3*10^20 eV (3*10^11 GeV, over 300 billion times as massive as a proton or a neutron).
We also get lots of extraterrestrial photons, like from the Sun. The farthest source of detected photons is the Universe's recombination era, where we see photons arriving from it as the cosmic microwave background that were traveling for nearly 14 billion years. That era happened everywhere, but it happened nearly 14 billion years ago, so we see only those photons from it that were traveling in all that time.
We also get lots of extraterrestrial neutrinos, like from the Sun. They were first detected in the mid 1960's, but fewer than expected. The farthest identified source of them is the blazar TXS 0506+056, a quasar with one jet pointing toward the Earth. Its neutrinos take nearly 6 billion years to travel.
Looking at gravity, we mostly receive it in the quasi-static limit, and mostly from the Sun and the Moon. We get it from the rest of our Galaxy, enough to make the Solar System orbit in it. Also from the rest of the Universe, as part of its expansion.
We have also received gravitational waves, and the farthest known one is GW190521, from the first few billion years of the Universe. So its G-waves had traveled some 10 billion years before we detected them.
noting
Christina Viviano on Twitter: "@asrivkin @elakdawalla This is a great graphic from (link)" / Twitter
noting
Using HED meteorites to interpret neutron and gamma‐ray data from asteroid 4 Vesta - Beck - 2015 - Meteoritics & Planetary Science - Wiley Online Library
The numbers:
Meteorites from Mars: 128.4 kg
- Shergottites: 72%
- Nakhlistes: 22%
- Chassignites/other: 6%
- Apollo samples: 81%
- Meteorites: 19%
- Eucrites: 69%
- Diogenites: 19%
- Howardites: 12%
HED meteorite). These were tracked down to the Vesta with their infrared spectra, an identification that was essentially confirmed when the Dawn spacecraft visited that asteroid. They have the odd feature of being igneous rocks, rocks that solidified from a liquid state. So early in the Solar System's history, Vesta had gotten hot enough to melt its rocks, likely from the decay of Al-26.HED meteorites are in 5% of all meteorite falls, pointing to 30 metric tons of recovered meteorites. Most meteorites' place of origin cannot be identified as precisely as these ones, but many of them have infrared spectra similar to those of many asteroids.
We receive electrons and ions in the solar wind and in cosmic rays. Some of the latter are *very* energetic, with energies up to 3*10^20 eV (3*10^11 GeV, over 300 billion times as massive as a proton or a neutron).
We also get lots of extraterrestrial photons, like from the Sun. The farthest source of detected photons is the Universe's recombination era, where we see photons arriving from it as the cosmic microwave background that were traveling for nearly 14 billion years. That era happened everywhere, but it happened nearly 14 billion years ago, so we see only those photons from it that were traveling in all that time.
We also get lots of extraterrestrial neutrinos, like from the Sun. They were first detected in the mid 1960's, but fewer than expected. The farthest identified source of them is the blazar TXS 0506+056, a quasar with one jet pointing toward the Earth. Its neutrinos take nearly 6 billion years to travel.
Looking at gravity, we mostly receive it in the quasi-static limit, and mostly from the Sun and the Moon. We get it from the rest of our Galaxy, enough to make the Solar System orbit in it. Also from the rest of the Universe, as part of its expansion.
We have also received gravitational waves, and the farthest known one is GW190521, from the first few billion years of the Universe. So its G-waves had traveled some 10 billion years before we detected them.
