Building planets
Part of Hall of Meteorites.
![Building Planets section at the Hall of Meteorites.](/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/amnh/images/exhibitions/permanent-exhibitions/earth-and-planetary-sciences-halls/hall-of-meteorites2/ross-hall-of-meteorites.-calder-images/building-planets-hom-3-2460x1348/4666453-1-eng-US/building-planets-hom-3-2460x1348_wideexact_2460.jpg 2460w,/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/amnh/images/exhibitions/permanent-exhibitions/earth-and-planetary-sciences-halls/hall-of-meteorites2/ross-hall-of-meteorites.-calder-images/building-planets-hom-3-2460x1348/4666453-1-eng-US/building-planets-hom-3-2460x1348_wideexact_1230.jpg 1230w,/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/amnh/images/exhibitions/permanent-exhibitions/earth-and-planetary-sciences-halls/hall-of-meteorites2/ross-hall-of-meteorites.-calder-images/building-planets-hom-3-2460x1348/4666453-1-eng-US/building-planets-hom-3-2460x1348_wideexact_800.jpg 800w,/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/amnh/images/exhibitions/permanent-exhibitions/earth-and-planetary-sciences-halls/hall-of-meteorites2/ross-hall-of-meteorites.-calder-images/building-planets-hom-3-2460x1348/4666453-1-eng-US/building-planets-hom-3-2460x1348_wideexact_400.jpg 400w)
Pieces of asteroids and planets that fall to Earth as meteorites reveal the processes at work deep inside planets-including our own.
The farmland near Brenham, Kansas, is flat and almost entirely free of rocks-yet farmers in the 1880s occasionally bent their plows on mysterious metallic objects. Homesteader Eliza Kimberly noticed that the odd black rocks resembled a meteorite she had seen as a schoolgirl in Iowa. Despite teasing from her husband and neighbors, she collected a large pile of the "iron rocks," and after five years of letter-writing she convinced a scientist to look at them. They were indeed meteorites.
The remarkable Brenham meteorite fragments contain gemlike olivine crystals embedded in an iron-nickel alloy. Billions of years ago, this rock and iron mixture formed when a large asteroid melted and separated into an iron core and a rocky crust. Meteorites that come from the deep interiors of such asteroids provide tantalizing clues about the interior of Earth and other planets.
Nininger Collection/American Meteorite Laboratory Photo Archives