Wind Guides the Meteorite's Path ✦

Every day, tons of cosmic dust and sand grains settle on Earth. Larger fragments of asteroids and comets heat up as they enter the atmosphere and streak across the sky in fiery trails. But then, as they cool, they glide through the air like a torn maple leaf: you saw where it detached, but a gust of wind carries it away. So the meteorite drifts in invisible currents, subject to the slightest breeze. Researchers reconstructed the rocks' flight using brightness recordings and light splitting, and a computer model accounted for how humidity and solar heating generate wind. It turned out that even a fragment the weight of a walnut shifts by 300 meters — three football fields. The reason is the chaotic nature of air: its gusts are unpredictable. Thanks to these calculations, 12 meteorites have already been found. Searching without accounting for the wind is like chasing a fallen leaf without knowing which way the wind blew.