just wondering this but where in the hell does iron from space come from??? i watched some show on the histroy channel about iron asteriods on how they could destroy earth but i did not hear on where the iron comes from. where in space?????
Heavy metals like iron are formed in a Supernova explosion. A supernova is a massive explosion of a star that occurs under two possible scenarios. The first is that a white dwarf star undergoes a nuclear based explosion after absorbing mass from a neighboring star (usually a red giant). The second, and more common, cause is when a massive star, usually a red giant, reaches iron in its nuclear fusion (or burning) processes. Iron has one of the highest binding energies of all of the elements and is the last element that can be produced by nuclear fusion, exothermically. All nuclear fusion reactions from here on are endothermic and so the star loses energy. The star's gravity then pulls its outer layers rapidly inward. The star collapses very quickly, and then explodes.
Iron production is the last phase of most stars, trillions of stars have spewed untold tons of iron into space and a lot of it ends up as asteroids, once in a few million years one these asteroids hits our planet and can cause great destruction. Scientists are aware of this and there is a faint hope that we will be able to alter the path of any that are headed this way.
If the meteorite came from a large body, such as a shattered small planet, the body could have been large enough to have an iron-nickel core, like the earth (some of the very large meteors between Jupiter and Mars have iron cores). The body could have been shattered by colliding with another large body, when the solar system was still in the process of forming. If the meteorite came from the outer, rocky layer of the shattered body, it would be a stony meteorite. There is another, rarer type of meteorite called a carbonaceous chondrite; and these are believed to have formed early in the history of the solar system, and not to have formed later on.
Depends on your view on the state of the enviouroment
