Prior to the 1800s, scientists were skeptical about the existence of meteorites.
A meteor shower in 1783.
Chladni suggested that these celestial bodies were fragments scattered throughout the solar system that never coalesced into planets.
Despite these challenges, Chladni’s book sparked debate among scientists.
In 1801, Giuseppe Piazzi identified Ceres, marking the first detection of what we now recognize as asteroids.
Heinrich Olbers continued this trend in 1802 by discovering Pallas.
These emerging findings gradually lent support to the notion that meteorites were indeed extraterrestrial in origin.
The French Academy of Sciences promptly dispatched the young scientist Jean-Baptiste Biot to investigate this celestial occurrence.
This observation suggested a common extraterrestrial source for these stones.
No trace of a volcano, can be seen in the region.
And within a few months, we moved from doubt to certainty.
