According to the Meteoritical Society, more than 30,000 meteorities have been identified. (Meteorites are the interstellar rocks that make it through our atmosphere and land on Earth.) Most of them come from the rocky debris (like asteroids and comets) floating through space, but a few dozen are believed to have originated on Mars or the moon.
Or Mercury? (What, can anomalous meteorites only come from places the begin with the letter “M”?)
In a new paper submitted to the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science, two Canadian astronomers crunch the numbers and find that we should expect Mercury-borne meteorites to strike the Earth at roughly half the rate of those from Mars. In other words, there might already be a few pieces of Mercury here on Earth.
The astros say that comets, asteroids or other meteorites strike Mercury with a speed of 5 to 20 times the escape velocity of the tiny planet. That means that any dust or rocks that get thrown in the air have some chance of escaping the gravitational pull of Mercury. Then, once they’re loose in space, there’s some chance they’ll eventually make their way to Earth and into my meteorite collection.
Of course, this begs the question: Would you know a meteorite from Mercury if it landed in your backyard?
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