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Beijing Sizzles with Hot Weather Alert at Highest Level.

A woman walks with cold patches on her forehead and neck amid a red alert for heatwave in Beijing, China June 23, 2023. (Reuters)
A woman walks with cold patches on her forehead and neck amid a red alert for heatwave in Beijing, China June 23, 2023. (Reuters)
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Beijing Sizzles with Hot Weather Alert at Highest Level.

A woman walks with cold patches on her forehead and neck amid a red alert for heatwave in Beijing, China June 23, 2023. (Reuters)
A woman walks with cold patches on her forehead and neck amid a red alert for heatwave in Beijing, China June 23, 2023. (Reuters)

Beijing on Friday upgraded its warning for hot weather to "red" - the highest in a color-coded alert system - with many parts of the Chinese capital roasting in temperatures of up to 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).

 

The official temperature for the capital, which is measured from its southern suburbs observatory, hit 40C just after 1:30 p.m. (0530 GMT) on Friday, according to the Beijing Municipal Meteorological Observatory.

 

"This is the first time since the establishment of the observatory that there has been a high temperature of more than 40C for two consecutive days," Zhang Yingxin, chief forecaster of the Municipal Meteorological Observatory, said at a press briefing. The observatory was founded in 1951.

 

On Thursday, the maximum temperature in the city of nearly 22 million people breached 41C and shattered the record for the hottest day in June.

 

A weather station in its southern suburbs, considered to be Beijing's main gauge, recorded 41.1C in the afternoon. The previous June high was logged on June 10, 1961, when the mercury hit 40.6C.

 

The daily maximum logged on Thursday was the city's second-highest in history, just below the 41.9C recorded by Beijing on July 24, 1999.

 

China has a four-tier weather warning system, with red the most severe, followed by orange, yellow and blue. A red alert indicates the temperature is set to rise above 40C within 24 hours.

 

The China Meteorological Administration said on Thursday it expected high temperatures to persist across much of the country's north for the next eight to ten days.

 

High temperature monitoring and warnings would continue on a rolling basis in places including Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Henan and Inner Mongolia, it added.

 

In Tianjin, a northern Chinese port city with a population of over 13 million, Thursday's temperature reached 41.2C, smashing local records.

 

Local authorities on Friday warned the extended period of high temperatures could have health impacts, including an increased risk of stroke, and advised people to drink at least 1.5 liters of water daily and limit their time outdoors.

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Astronomers Trace the Origin of Meteorites that Have Struck Earth

Reporters gather around a piece of a meteorite, which according to local authorities and scientists was lifted from the bottom of the Chebarkul Lake, placed on display in a local museum in Chelyabinsk, October 18, 2013. REUTERS/Andrey Tkachenko/File Photo
Reporters gather around a piece of a meteorite, which according to local authorities and scientists was lifted from the bottom of the Chebarkul Lake, placed on display in a local museum in Chelyabinsk, October 18, 2013. REUTERS/Andrey Tkachenko/File Photo
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Astronomers Trace the Origin of Meteorites that Have Struck Earth

Reporters gather around a piece of a meteorite, which according to local authorities and scientists was lifted from the bottom of the Chebarkul Lake, placed on display in a local museum in Chelyabinsk, October 18, 2013. REUTERS/Andrey Tkachenko/File Photo
Reporters gather around a piece of a meteorite, which according to local authorities and scientists was lifted from the bottom of the Chebarkul Lake, placed on display in a local museum in Chelyabinsk, October 18, 2013. REUTERS/Andrey Tkachenko/File Photo

Meteorites - rocks that fall to Earth from space - have pelted our planet from its birth about 4.5 billion years ago to today, often causing scant damage but sometimes triggering cataclysms. But from where exactly are these space rocks coming? New research has the answer, according to Reuters.

By studying the composition of meteorites that have landed over the years and the asteroids populating our solar system, astronomers have determined that about 70% of known meteorite impacts came from just three groups of asteroids residing in our solar system's main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

In total, the researchers in three different studies have now been able to account for the origins of most of the tens of thousands of known meteorites that have landed on Earth.

As part of the research, the astronomers carried out numerical simulations that enabled them to model the formation and evolution of families of asteroids orbiting the sun in the main asteroid belt.

"It is a group of asteroids which have similar orbits because they were fragments created during a collision between two asteroids," said astronomer Miroslav Brož of Charles University in Prague, lead author of two of the studies, published in the journal Nature, and Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Collisions in the main asteroid belt send rocky fragments flying haphazardly through space, with some of those eventually striking Earth.

"While more than 70,000 meteorites are known, only 6% had been clearly identified by their composition as coming from the moon, Mars, or Vesta, one of the largest asteroids in the main asteroid belt. The source of the other meteorites had remained unidentified," said astronomer Michaël Marsset of the European Southern Observatory in Chile, lead author of one of the two studies published in the journal Nature.

The Massalia asteroid family, formed about 40 million years ago, accounts for a class of meteorites called L chondrites that represent 37% of known Earth meteorites, the research found. The Karin family, formed 5.8 million years ago, and the Koronis family, formed 7.6 million years ago, account for a class of meteorites called H chondrites that represent 33% of known Earth meteorites, it showed.

Another 8% of the Earth meteorites can be traced to the Flora and Nysa asteroid families in the main asteroid belt, the research found. And about 6% of the meteorites can be traced to Vesta, it showed. Previous research found that less than 1% of the meteorites came from Mars and the moon.

The researchers are still exploring the source of the remaining roughly 15% of known Earth meteorites.

Space rocks have played a role in shaping the direction of life on Earth.

The new research did not look at the source of the one that struck Earth 66 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs, aside from their bird descendants, and enabled mammals to become dominant. Another study published in August found that this object formed beyond Jupiter and probably migrated inward to become part of the main asteroid belt before being sent hurtling toward Earth, perhaps due to a collision.

As the dinosaur-killing impact showed, a large space rock can pose a mortal threat to life on Earth. In 2022, NASA's DART spacecraft slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos in a proof-of-principle planetary defense mission that showed that a spacecraft can change a celestial object's trajectory just enough to keep Earth safe.

Some of the meteorites that have landed on Earth can give clues about the solar system's early history. They are primordial leftovers from a time before the planets formed in a large disk of material - called the protoplanetary disk - swirling around the newborn sun.

"Chondrites are primitive meteorites that have mostly preserved their original composition since their formation in our protoplanetary disk," Marsset said.