7 Seven Wonders of ASTEROIDS COMETS AND METEORS Ron Miller TWENTY FIRST CENTURY BOOKS Minneapolis
4 INTRODUCTION PEOPLE LOVE TO MAKE LISTS OF THE BIGGEST AND THE BEST ALMOST TWENTY FIVE HUNDRED YEARS AGO A GREEK WRITER NAMED HERODOTUS MADE A LIST OF THE MOST AWESOME THINGS EVER BUILT BY PEOPLE THE LIST INCLUDED BUILDINGS STATUES AND OTHER OBJECTS THAT WERE LARGE WONDROUS AND IMPRESSIVE LATER OTHER WRITERS ADDED NEW ITEMS TO THE LIST WRITERS EVENTUALLY AGREED ON A FINAL LIST IT WAS CALLED THE SEVEN WONDERS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD The list became so famous that people began imitating it They made other lists of wonders They listed the Seven Wonders of the Modern World and the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages People even made lists of undersea wonders and the wonders of science and technology But Earth doesn't contain all the wonders that have been discovered Our planet shares the solar system with many other worlds They all have wonderful things to see THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM After a house is built a big pile of material is always left over The same thing happened after the formation of the solar system The Sun and the planets were formed from a huge cloud of dust and gas This dust and gas came together to form tiny clumps of rock metal and ice These tiny clumps gathered into bigger clumps After millions of years these clumps were large enough to become the Sun and the planets
5 The asteroid belt in the solar system is made up of the orbiting pieces of rock ice and metal left over after the planets and the Sun formed This illustration shows a view of the Sun from an asteroid Not all the matter in the original dust cloud was used up Chunks of rock metal and ice were left over These are what we call asteroids and comets and meteors They are important wonders because they are remnants of the very earliest beginnings of our solar system
