
Show Notes
There are a few reasons space rocks are so hard to find. For starters, more than two thirds of the Earth is covered with water, so for all the meteorites that actually get to Earth, most of them splash down into oceanic obscurity. For a meteorite to be discovered and studied, it has to land… on land. most meteorites that ARE found are found in Earth’s deserts. And it turns out that the biggest desert in the world is – you guessed it – Antarctica.
So of the 67,000 meteorites discovered and documented, some 42,000 have been found in Antarctica, and each year, expeditions bring back nearly 1000 more. But scientists estimate that the meteorites we’ve found so far are just the tip of the iceberg; they probably only represent about 13% of the space rocks locked up in Antarctica; so there are plenty more secrets left out there, lurking in the ice.
MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC
https://neptunestudios.info
If you like what we do, you can help us!
- Become our patron: https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth
- Buy our merch: http://dftba.com/minuteearth
- Buy our book: https://minuteearth.com/books
- Sign up to our newsletter: http://news.minuteearth.com
- Share with your friends and family
- Leave us a comment (we read them!)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More from MinuteEarth
One of the strangest-ever crime sprees hit a small town in England in 1921. It wasn't murder or bank robbery - instead, people were finding that the milk bottles delivered to their houses would have the foil caps pierced and the cream on top of the milk sucked out. Turns out, birds - specifically a species called great tits - had learned a new way to find a meal. The wildest part is that within a few years, birds all over Europe had copied the behavior.
Birds are incredible navigators that can travel half the world to find the same patch of forest or ponds every single year.
This bird has a superpower most animals don’t have: it can fly. And the reason birds can fly is because every part of their body is optimized for an airborne life.