WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A METEORITE AND AN ASTEROID?

Answer

An asteroid is a small planet belonging to or originating from the belt of numerous objects that orbit the Sun with orbits between those of Mars and Jupiter. A meteorite is an object that remains (in the sense of ‘falling on the surface of the earth’) of a stone that falls from the sky.

What is the connection between the two? Ultimately, most meteorites come from the asteroid belt. Asteroids are relatively small objects that come fairly close to Jupiter, and can therefore be disrupted in their orbit around the Sun. In this way, their orbits can be changed so that they can even cross Earth’s. Also important in the whole story is that the chaos that Jupiter in particular causes in the asteroid belt sometimes leads to two asteroids colliding with each other and thus shattering into smaller chunks, and these are often the pieces that eventually reach Earth as a meteorite. In some meteorites we see very clearly that they were once part of a larger body, but there are others that have always been relatively small stones from the early stages of the formation of our planetary system.