Meteor Strike

An extraordinary celestial event occurred on the midnight of Feb 6th. A college employee Kamaraj dies and three people are injured due to a meteorite strike in Chennai campus. It was later confirmed by a National Physical Laboratory scientist to be indeed a meteorite strike which had created a small crater and embedded within was a stone remnant.
You and I have heard of Leonids (occurring around 17th Nov), Perseids (occurring around August 12th). We have heard about Quadrantis and Geminids. There are at least 20 known such meteor and asteroid showers which are seen as shooting stars in the sky. They originate from splinters mostly of passing comets which disintegrate due to the Sun’s rays as they are composed of shards, dust and ice. Some comets which have completed several approaches in their orbits to the Sun finally disintegrate when there is very little mass left in them and they are no more able to hold on to each other. Some minor planets like Phaethon release these asteroids from the asteroid belt located between the planets Mercury and Jupiter. The gravitational tugs in the solar system drive all of these objects haywire and some of these meteors come close to the Earth. They are mostly burnt out at the entry of the earth’s atmosphere where there is a lot of friction but some who probably have more mass do enter and impact the earth’s crust. One of the most important such meteor was the strike at Tunguska in Siberia which burnt an area of 2000 sq kms. There have been many more of such strikes in China and America and in India as well.
These meteorite showers have caused little harm to humans (some people have died in farms and cities) but have provided with a celestial delight over the centuries. The Leonid showers were a delight to watch in the winters of 1999.
Astronomers look for evidence of water, amino acids and chemical and metal composition of meteorites. Comets we know are some of the oldest objects in the solar system. Comets existed before any planets were formed. So they can give us clues to the formation of the solar system. Meteorites have been found on earth in North Africa the most. However they have been found almost scattered on the globe. There are laboratories available all throughout the world to find out whether a rock is an earthen rock (it is called a meteowrong) or a meteorite.