Meteorites from Other Planets

There are a bunch of meteorites found on Earth that are known to be from Mars. Are there meteorites from any other planets that have landed on Earth?

This webpage seems to indicate that it’s possible for impacts to eject material from Mercury into an earth crossing orbit but that no metorites of Mercurian origin have been identified.

http://www.meteoritestudies.com/protected_MERCURY.HTM

Venus is also possible but less likely because of the thicker atmosphere.

There are meteorites on Earth that may be from Mars. None are known to be. They don’t come with Made on Mars stickers on them.

There are also a good many believed to come from the Moon, which is unsurprising, it being by far the closest planet.

NASA seems pretty convinced that 34 are positively identified as being Martian in origin, and a bunch more that are likely but not as certain.

http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/snc/

The Moon is a planet now? :wink:

Great. The moon is a planet but Pluto isn’t. What is this solar system coming to?

Yup. Always has been. And so is the Sun.

Any sane definition of “planet” which includes the Earth must also include the Moon. The IAU’s current definition of “planet” cannot be considered sane, as, if it were actually applied as written, it would not include the Earth (a fact which is just quietly swept under the rug by those who wrote the current definition).

That said, I would not consider Luna and Earth on the one hand to be in the same category of objects as Pluto and Eris on the other (nor would I consider Jupiter and Saturn to be in either category). Personally, I favor replacing the category of “planet” entirely, with the three categories of “rockball”, “gasball”, and “iceball”. Thus, for instance, I would say that Earth is the largest of our system’s six rockballs, that our system includes a total of four gasballs, and that Pluto and Eris are among the largest of our system’s myriad iceballs.

Did you just call the moon a planet in order to give your little pedantic speech when questioned?

There are probably also Earth-origin meteorites on Mars, although fewer because Earth gives up her ejecta less freely and Mars catches things less often.

Still, it’s cool to think some rock with Earth-fossils in it might be on Mars.

That could be darn confusing. :slight_smile:

That would get the Curiosity team pretty excited, wouldn’t it?

Statist!

Where are the Plasmaballs and Liquidballs? :stuck_out_tongue:

Wouldn’t the Sun be a Plasmaball? There’s a planet of almost all water that would be a Liquidball over in …

Oops, said too much.

No, I did so because in a discussion of meteorites from other planets, the nearest planet, and the one which has been the origin of a larger number of meteorites than other planets, is relevant.

I thought planets were objects orbiting the Sun that are larger than asteroids.

Gotta get comets out of that definition, come to think of it…how large are comets?

He’s right. The question then becomes “How many planets do we think we have recovered pieces of here on Earth?” Which is in fact the OP.

We have them from;

The Moon
Mars (we think)

Beyond that, none suspected of being from say, Pluto, or the moons of Jupiter or Saturn, and certainly there wouldn’t be any from the various gas giants.

Let me amend that.

We think we might have pieces of Vesta.

Oh, cool, I hadn’t heard about those Vesta rocks. I wouldn’t have guessed that Vesta was big enough to be a significant source (“significant” being here defined as “enough that we would ever have found any”).

Anyone know anything about meteors from Mercury, Venus, or Ceres? I can’t see any reason there wouldn’t be, unless Venus’ atmosphere would prevent escape events.

See the webpage I quoted in the second post. It sounds like there are almost certainly pieces of Mercury on the earth somewhere but they are rare enough that we haven’t found any yet.