So here’s the thing about meteorites. They’re not some strange or obscure phenomena. They are central to understanding the origin of our home planet, to our very existence on this planet, and even to our future.
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Geologists are trying to recognize the magnitude of this change by giving our epoch a special name: “the Anthropocene,” the age of humans. Some people find this depressing because they think that the Anthropocene is inevitably a bad thing. But it’s not. Because we aren’t bacteria. Those brains that give us the ability to harness energy also give us the ability to shape the way the planet is transformed. We can design our future.
We think Psyche is the metal core of a small planet that was destroyed in the high-energy, high-speed first one one-hundredth of the solar system’s time. It is the only way that humankind can ever visit a metal core, because Psyche is the only body like it in the solar system, and we can never go to the Earth’s core.
When you think of magma chambers you probably think of red hot boiling goo. But actually we as scientists have learned that that’s not a very good model.