How can a meteorite be a piece of rock from Mars?
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If an asteroid hits mars, debris is shot up and is sometimes fast enough to escape Mars' gravity. If these rocks get into Earth's orbit, there's a chance that Earth can run into these.\n\nCooldude, please edit your post and give me credit for your first paragraph.
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The Rock Cycle is a group of changes. Igneous rock can change into sedimentary rock or into metamorphic rock. Sedimentary rock can change into metamorphic rock or into igneous rock. Metamorphic rock can change into igneous or sedimentary rock. \nIgneous rock forms when magma cools and makes crystals. Magma is a hot liquid made of melted minerals. The minerals can form crystals when they cool. Igneous rock can form underground, where the magma cools slowly. Or, igneous rock can form above ground, where the magma cools quickly. \n\n \n\nWhen it pours out on Earth's surface, magma is called lava. Yes, the same liquid rock matter that you see coming out of volcanoes. \n\nOn Earth's surface, wind and water can break rock into pieces. They can also carry rock pieces to another place. Usually, the rock pieces, called sediments, drop from the wind or water to make a layer. The layer can be buried under other layers of sediments. After a long time the sediments can be cemented together to make sedimentary rock. In this way, igneous rock can become sedimentary rock. \n\nAll rock can be heated. But where does the heat come from? Inside Earth there is heat from pressure (push your hands together very hard and feel the heat). There is heat from friction (rub your hands together and feel the heat). There is also heat from radioactive decay (the process that gives us nuclear power plants that make electricity). \n\nSo, what does the heat do to the rock? It bakes the rock.\n\nBaked rock does not melt, but it does change. It forms crystals. If it has crystals already, it forms larger crystals. Because this rock changes, it is called metamorphic. Remember that a caterpillar changes to become a butterfly. That change is called metamorphosis. Metamorphosis can occur in rock when they are heated to 300 to 700 degrees Celsius. \n\nWhen Earth's tectonic plates move around, they produce heat. When they collide, they build mountains and metamorphose (met-ah-MORE-foes) the rock. \n\nThe rock cycle continues. Mountains made of metamorphic rocks can be broken up and washed away by streams. New sediments from these mountains can make new sedimentary rock. \n\nThe rock cycle never stop
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This depends on the mineral being formed. For instance, silicate based minerals (from igneous rocks) are fromed by the cooling effect of molten lava. The size of the mineral formed is dependant on the length of time the 'lava' has to cool. This process is called crystalisation. \nIn sedimentary rocks, minerals are formed by erosion, chemical changes, de-salination (extraction of water, although the mineral was present in the water to start with i.e halite), pressure and temperature.
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Obviously, it's not an actual explosion, but the effects are very large.  Let's take the one that's supposed to have killed off the dinosaurs.  The meteorite was very large - I don't have the scientific estimates in front of me, but at least a kilometer in diameter, probably more.  Now this thing is big and moving at a very high velocity; it has lots of kinetic energy.  When it hits the earth, the meterite stops moving, but according to the Law of Conservation of Energy, the energy can't just disappear.  Instead, it has to be changed into other forms such as sound, heat, and vibration.\n \n Also, there's Newton's law that says for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  If you throw a ball at the ground it will bounce back, but if the ball has no elasticity and can't bounce, then the ground itself (part of it, dust etc.) will bounce back instead.  That's what happened when the meteorite hit earth.  Only, of course, it was a lot bigger than a ball, and the crater it created was between 180 and 300 km across.  It's in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, if you're interested.
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Recently, the giant impact hypothesis has been considered a more viable scientific hypothesis for the moon's origin than the coformation or condensation hypothesis. The Giant Impact hypothesis holds that the Moon formed from the ejecta resulting from a collision between a very early, semi-molten Earth and a planet-like object the size of Mars, which has been referred to as Theia or Orpheus. The material ejected from this impact would have gathered in orbit around Earth and formed the Moon. This hypothesis is bolstered by two main observations: First, the composition of the Moon resembles that of Earth's crust, whereas it has relatively few heavy elements that would have been present if it formed by itself out of the same material from which Earth formed. Second, through radiometric dating, it has been determined that the Moon's crust formed between 20 and 30 million years after that of Earth, despite its smallness and associated larger loss of internal heat, although it has been suggested that this hypothesis does not adequately address the abundance of volatile elements in the moon.[6]
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depend on the type of rock. what material or materials is it made of, is it granite or what?
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If you mean completely made of diamond (tetrahedral carbon), then no.  There may be some sections of rocky moons where impacts from smaller object have created diamonds through heat and pressure but probably never enough to convert an entire moon to diamond or diamondoid material.\n\nHowever, a number of years ago there was an article published in Science (I think) that discussed what happens to carbon that is disassociated in Jupiter's atmosphere.  The author suggested that this carbon would fall to a point within the planet where the temperature and pressure would be sufficient to form a diamondoid layer or regions.\n\nI want to say the author is Frank Drake but it's been a number of years since I've seen the article.
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Igneous rocks are formed when molten rock (magma) cools and solidifies, with or without crystallization, either below the surface as intrusive (plutonic) rocks or on the surface as extrusive (volcanic) rocks. This magma can be derived from either the Earth's mantle or pre-existing rocks made molten by extreme temperature and pressure changes. Over 700 types of igneous rocks have been described, most of them formed beneath the surface of the Earth's crust. The word "igneous" is derived from the Latin ignis, meaning "fire".\n\nIgneous rock are classified according to mode of occurrence, texture, chemical composition, and the geometry of the igneous body.\n\nIgneous rocks make up 95% of the Earth's upper crust.
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Chondrites and achondrites is one answer.  Chondrites are the more common form.  But another answer would be "stony" and "iron", of which the stony form is more common.  But of course you can have stony-iron meteorites too...
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Our solar system- the Sun, planets, Kuiper belt and Oort cloud, everything orbiting the sun even many times further than the orbit of Pluto- is thought to have condensed from a vast cloud of interstellar gas some billions of years ago when that cloud was shocked or squeezed by a supernova explosion. The dust and grains that condensed out of the cooling solar gas aggregated to form larger fragments of rock. Chondritic meteorites are basically just such collections of grains and fragments that have been compacted together to form a larger piece of rock and eventually small planetary bodies. Such bodies are termed planetesimals when they become roughly as large as asteroids (several kilometres to a few hundred kilometres in dimension). The larger they grow, the greater the gravitational attraction that the planetesimals exert and hence the more effectively they sweep up additional particles and rock fragments while circling the Sun. (Britannica CD) \n\nBecause that initial shockwave came from a particular direction and because the cloud was not of uniform density, the particles had a net rotation around their center of gravity. Humans subsequently identified that direction as "counterclockwise as viewed from above the north pole of the sun". As the bodies of the solar system grew by accretion, particles swept up from different distances from the center of gravity (the sun) had different orbital velocities. Analogously, water swirling down a drain moves slower further and faster closer to the center. \n\nGalileo and Newton showed that rotational energy is conserved: The sun and planets ‘inherited' their spin from the orbits of their constituent particles, so to speak. Today, some five billion years later, all that rotational energy is still conserved in the rotations and revolutions of the bodies of the solar system. Our solar system is not unchanging, though. Because of gravitational interactions between moons and their planets, between the planets, meteors and comets themselves and interactions between the solar wind and the magnetospheres of the planets, rotational energy is still be ‘traded' back and forth: Mercury orbits in a 3:2 resonance with its rotation, our day is getting longer while the moon only shows one face towards us, the rings of the gas giants are temporary phenomena,... But that's another story.\n\nIn other words, An act of GOD
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i don't think so... yah it's true that when a big meteorit hit the earth o pretty big piece was separated and the scientists think the moon is that part, but i think the moon has completely different structure that ours
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Funny, I just watched this on the Discovery channel. Meteorites were stone falling from the sky, and not knowing how or why stone would fall from the sky.....you guessed it, the sky must be falling.
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Martian geology was first studied using telescope. Then a great improvement was made by having satellites orbiting Mars which obtained satellite images that were transmitted back to earth. Then several missions were send to land robots to study Mars geology. The last mission included several sophisticated devices that can analyze the chemical composition of some samples. The next step will be to collect samples and send them back to earth for analysis.\nAll data collected in Mars is compared to what we know about earth geology, since this will help us understand Mars Geology. \n\nAdditional information can be found at:\n\nhttp://www.marsgeo.com/
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The answer is: it is pretty hard to find them.\n\nThe easiest ones to find are iron meteorites, litterally hunks of iron from space.  The tend to have a black crust, but will look like mangled chunks of iron.\n\nFor your more stone-like meteorites it gets harder.  A metal detector still helps, as even most "rock-like" meteorites still have lots of iron and nickle in them.  Generally they will appear as dark black rocks, due to the surface of the rock having been melted during entry into the atmosphere.  Finding them in the mountains will be _very_ tough, as they really, really just look like most of the rocks sitting around.\n\nThe desert is a bit easier, especially if it is a more or less sandy desert.  If you are someplace without any rocks (like a sand dune desert) and you come across a dark, black rock, you may have found one.  The easiest way to find them it to go to places like this, where a dark black rock will stand out against the background.  Most proffesional meteorite collection efforts take place in places like the sahara desert, and antarctica.\n\nTo really identify them outside of these "easy" circumstances you will really need to train yourself up.  There are field guides out there that can help train you to look for the slight tell-tale signs that the rock you are holding is not from our planet.
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Comets, as several people have pointed out, are large bodies of rock and ice that orbit the sun. When they come close enough to the sun, energy from the sun causes some of the ices to vaporize, causing a visible coma (cloud around the nucleus) and tail, consisting of gas and dust.\n\nA meteor is the streak made in the upper atmosphere by a bit of high-velocity space debris. The bits of debris themselves are called meteoroids. The ones that produce predictable meteor showers are clouds of dust shed by comets. Other meteoroids are  pieces of primordial matter that never accreted into planets, or chunks of matter broken off of larger bodies by impacts with asteroids. \n\nA meteoroid that makes its way to the surface of Earth is called a meteorite. They can be stony, metallic, or both. Some meteorites have been identified as coming from Mars and the Moon.
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It depents on the gem, of course.  Most of the ones people think of as gems, such as diamonds, sapphires &c., form as high-temperature, high-pressure phases in deep molten rock.  They don't necessarily take a long time to crystallize either.  These phases aren't stable in cooler melts, though,  so the problem is to quickly get them to the surface from their formation depths.  Some volcanic eruptions do this.  Diamonds have to come all the way from the mantle to near the surface in minutes.\n\nOther gems can form near or at the surface.  Opal, for instance, is formed by precipitation of silica from groundwater.
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1. Is it heavy? Most meteorites are nickel/iron. They feel heavier than a rock of the same size. \n\n2. Does a magnet stick to it? Being metal, meteorites stick like glue to a magnet.