词条陨石

描述: 陨石是指尺寸在30微米到1米之间，穿过地球或其他天体的大气层后坠落到该天体表面的固态宇宙天体。一个天体只有在穿过地球或其他天体的大气层后才被称为陨石。处在行星际空间或穿过大气层时，它被称为流星体。流星体在大气层中产生的激波会发光，此时我们就观测到一颗流星。

陨石根据成分的不同，可分为石陨石、石铁陨石和铁陨石。在与观测到的流星相对应的陨石中，石陨石是最常见的类型。不过，石陨石通常看起来像地球上的普通岩石，所以容易被忽视。而在地面上发现的陨石中，铁陨石是最常见的类型。大多数陨石都是在南极洲或沙漠中发现的，因为那里是最容易发现陨石的地方。

大多数被发现的陨石质量从几克到几千克不等。已知最大的陨石是坠落在纳米比亚的霍巴陨石，重达60多吨。有些陨石大到足以产生一个陨击坑。陨石以其坠落的地点来命名。

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The OAE Multilingual Glossary is a project of the IAU Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE) in collaboration with the IAU Office of Astronomy Outreach (OAO). The terms and definitions were chosen, written and reviewed by a collective effort from the OAE, the OAE Centers and Nodes, the OAE National Astronomy Education Coordinators (NAECs) and other volunteers. You can find a full list of credits here. All glossary terms and their definitions are released under a Creative Commons CC BY-4.0 license and should be credited to "IAU OAE".

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其他语言版本

阿拉伯语: النيزك
德语: Meteoriten
英语: Meteorite
法语: Météorites
意大利语: Meteorite
日语: 隕石 (外部链接)
繁体中文: 隕石

相关媒体

A shiny silver cross-section of a meteorite with two sets of many parallel lines crossing each other

Iron Meteorite

图注： This iron meteorite was originally found in Harriman, Tennessee, USA and is now held in the collection of the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, Washington DC, USA. The total mass of the meteorite was about 30kg. Here we see the interior after the meteorite was cut into pieces. Iron meteorites are largely composed of an iron-nickel. They also often have a crystalline structure which manifests here as a series of crossing shiny straight lines known as a Widmanstätten pattern. This is thought to have formed as the meteoroid (the object that would eventually fall through the Earth's atmosphere as a meteor and land on the ground as a meteorite) cooled very slowly in the vacuum of space in the early solar system. This led to the growth of this crystalline structure.
来源： Chuck Sutherland 来源链接

License: PD 公共领域图标