Aug 19, 2026 · 2 min · 3 segments
Annual meteor showers like the Perseids can give lovely shooting star displays – but they don’t produce meteorites. That’s because the tiny particles involved are made of fluffy, low-density clay-like…
Annual meteor showers like the Perseids can give lovely shooting star displays, but they don't produce meteorites.
That's because the tiny particles involved are made of fluffy, low-density, clay-like material, which burns up before reaching the ground.
On average, a meteorite falls on every half square mile of Arizona once every ten thousand years.
Almost all are grape-sized or smaller and mostly stony.
Many contain iron, but only four percent are the densely metallic variety like the one that formed Meteor Crater fifty thousand years ago.
Despite being bombarded by cosmic rays in space, meteorites are not abnormally radioactive.
Pass a Geiger counter over a fresh one and the chances are it won't register above background levels, likely giving it a lower reading than your granite kitchen countertop.
Since 1912, there have been seven meteorite falls where fragments have been recovered in Arizona.
But northern Arizona's most impressive recorded event was on July 19th, 1912.
That evening, a refrigerator-sized space rock exploded over Holbrook with a rumbling blast heard forty miles away.
Thousands of fragments rained down along the Santa Fe Railroad in a three-mile-long path.
These meteorites are still being found today.
One intrepid meteorite hunter found some of the smallest fragments by dragging magnets over the ground in areas where ants had incorporated the tiny iron-rich fragments into their anthills.
Annual meteor showers like the Perseids can give lovely shooting star displays, but they don't produce meteorites.
That's because the tiny particles involved are made of fluffy, low-density, clay-like material, which burns up before reaching the ground.
On average, a meteorite falls on every half square mile of Arizona once every ten thousand years.
Almost all are grape-sized or smaller and mostly stony.
Many contain iron, but only four percent are the densely metallic variety like the one that formed Meteor Crater fifty thousand years ago.
Despite being bombarded by cosmic rays in space, meteorites are not abnormally radioactive.
Pass a Geiger counter over a fresh one and the chances are it won't register above background levels, likely giving it a lower reading than your granite kitchen countertop.
Since 1912, there have been seven meteorite falls where fragments have been recovered in Arizona.
But northern Arizona's most impressive recorded event was on July 19th, 1912.
That evening, a refrigerator-sized space rock exploded over Holbrook with a rumbling blast heard forty miles away.
Thousands of fragments rained down along the Santa Fe Railroad in a three-mile-long path.
These meteorites are still being found today.
One intrepid meteorite hunter found some of the smallest fragments by dragging magnets over the ground in areas where ants had incorporated the tiny iron-rich fragments into their anthills.
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