• PROGRAMME
• SYNOPSES

Searching for meteorites in the chilean desert

1. Author: Giosué Boetto Cohen
2. Director: Dario Barezzi
3. Production: RAI Educational in collab. con ASI
4. Italy
5. 10 min.
6. 2002

The documentary, part of a series realised in collaboration with ASI, the Italian Space Agency (Agenzia Spaziale Italiana), explains the importance of the research and study of meteorites falling on our planet, and shows some examples.
Giosué Boetto Cohen, a scientific journalist, went to Atacama desert, in northern Chile, to meet a group of geologists and astronomers from several countries. The spot is special because it is extremely isolated: nobody comes to touch what falls from the sky. The research is therefore fruitful. Together with professor Holger Petersen, an astronomer from Copenhagen University, they tell the history of the gold-miners that during the 19th century thought meteorites were made of silver. Next to an impact crater we can still see many tools and remains of their presence. Next to a big meteorite, Professor Claudio Canut de Bon, from the University of La Serena, tells us the history of its finding and how – at the beginning of the history of the Solar System – mesosiderites, made of half iron and silicates, were formed, resulting from the collision of different asteroids, and of which we show a section that puts well in evidence the inner mixture.

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