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Every Meteorite That's Slammed Into Earth Since 2300 BC [MAP]

Dina Spector   

Every Meteorite That's Slammed Into Earth Since 2300 BC [MAP]
Science1 min read

Meteor mania has taken over all corners of the Internet, following a string of close encounters and sightings of flying space rocks.

Fragments from a bus-sized meteor that exploded in Earth's atmosphere rained down over an industrial Russian city last Friday.

Less than 24 hours later, an asteroid came within 17,200 miles of Earth, the closest approach for an an object of this size.

A day later, Bay Area residents reported seeing a fireball streaking through the sky.

A map showing every meteor strike since 2,300 B.C. is now making the rounds. The map was created by Javier de la Torre, co-founder of data visualization company CartoDB.

De la Torre used data uploaded to the Guardian's website that originally came from the Meteorological Society. The data shows where actual meteorites, or impact craters from meteorites, have been found. The size of the circle corresponds to the size of the object and the color corresponds to the number of meteorites or craters in a given location.

There are probably tons more out there that have fallen from the sky, but just haven't been found yet.

You can view the interactive version here. It's cool because you can actually click on the circles to get more detail about the meteorite's composition, location, weight and the year it was discovered.

The map includes more than 34,000 locations where there's evidence of a meteorite strike, according to Geek.com.

It looks like the United States is a popular place!

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