There’s a giant asteroid somewhere out in the solar system, and it hurled a big rock at Earth.
The evidence for this mystery space rock comes from a diamond-studded meteor that exploded over Sudan in 2008.
NASA had spotted the 9-ton (8,200 kilograms), 13-foot (4 meters) meteor heading toward the planet well before impact, and researchers showed up in the Sudanese desert to collect an unusually rich haul of remains. Now, a new study of one of those meteorites suggests that the meteor may have broken off of a giant asteroid — one more or less the size of the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt.