Cosmic Beginnings

 Close by where I left off yesterday is a display on the Moon, our nearest neighbour. I was putting these posts together on the day Artemis II launched her mission to the Moon.

This Moon rock was brought back as part of the Apollo missions and now resides here.

Earth basalt has a lot in common with lunar basalt, which makes up much of the dark areas we see when we look up at the Moon.

The long process of the Earth coming into being started long ago, with the Big Bang.

Meteorites still hit the planet from time to time. Their physical make up gives science clues not just to what's out there, but to how our planet works.

This large meteorite comes from Canyon Diablo in the United States, having had struck the planet 50 000 years ago.

In living memory for many Canadians was the Buzzard Coulee meteorite. It lit up the skies of the Canadian west in 2003, breaking apart. This is one of many pieces from it.

Much further back in history, 1.85 billion years ago, a ten kilometre wide meteorite struck the earth at what is now Sudbury, Ontario. It left a mineral wealth deep in the earth that the region is still known for, and a crater with a diameter of 130 kilometers.