Is meteorite hard

Answer 1

Contrary to the above answer, small meteorites are often very cold when they reach the ground and may even form frost.. While a meteor is exposed to extremely high temperatures while falling, most of that heat goes into melting the outer layers, which are then stripped away. This stripping of material means that relatively little heat reaches the meteorite's interior.

Answer 2

Meteorites can be rocky, metallic, or a combination of both. The outside may be shiny and dimpled, and dark from heat as it enters the atmosphere. The Mohs scale is used to identify the hardness of individual minerals, and therefore cannot be used on meteorites which vary in composition.

Answer 3

Generally, meteorites are made of stone or iron, and sometimes a combination. So they're generally pretty tough. And having been incinerated while passing through the atmosphere.... Anything that wasn't pretty tough wouldn't have survived the fall.

There is a variety of meteorite known as a "carbonaceous chondrite", and these can have parts that are "less hard"; sort of coal-like in consistency. But these are relatively rare.

Answer 4

That depends on how long it has been sitting there on the ground.

A "meteoroid", which is a rock floating in space, is pretty cold.

A meteor is the flash of light we see when a space rock is plowing through the atmosphere. It can be going upwards of 120,000 miles per hour, and between the friction and the atmospheric pressure and compression, most meteors burn up completely or explode in the atmosphere.

A meteorite is a meteor that survives and hits the ground. When it hits, it is VERY hot, but most meteorites aren't found right away, and they cool off to the temperature of their surroundings within a few minutes or hours. A lot of meteorites have been found in Antarctica; when you find a rock sitting on top of a layer of ice a few thousand feet thick, it's pretty easy to figure out that it didn't just pop out of the ground! Those meteorites are, like the ice around them, quite cold.