Dear Earth – You've gained weight, haven’t you?

Every year, we have the pleasure to stare at the sky and see these bright lights crossing the Ether. Especially during meteor showers (Leonids, or Perseids, for instance), where you can get up to 100 lashes per minute!

As most of us know, these phenomena are due to interstellar blocks or fragments of rock or ice – space dust somehow – that burst into flame when crossing the Earth relatively thick atmosphere… at 50,000 kph (about 30,000 mph).

Some could be several meters big, and weight hundreds of tons. In such case, there may still be something left after crossing the atmosphere, and finally land on the surface of our planet – and only then can it be called a meteorite. At such speed, they carry with them so much energy that consequences of the impact can be dramatic – it is believed that a “big” one is responsible for the end of the Dinosaurs, some 65 million years ago.

But a lot are just a few centimeters big, and the vast majority actually much smaller than sand. So nothing is left after crossing the atmosphere… Nothing? Well they may vaporize, but they just don’t “vanish” – puff. Material did come to us, and stayed there… somewhere on the surface.

Eventually, it is about 40,000 tons of space material that come to Earth each year!

Since the early days of our planet, it is about 160 billion tons accumulated. Wooww. That a lot! Well, not really… barely 100 millionth of Earth total weight.

It does have lots of consequences, though, as it is believed to be the origin of various mineral on Earth (copper, nickel…), may have helped creating the atmosphere from degassing during the impact, and may even have been the source of Life…

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