Jumbangla Desk: In the cloudless night sky, we often see a line of bright light, which disappears again within a moment. Many call this event a meteorite or falling star. Such a scene is seen in the night sky when meteors enter the Earth's atmosphere.

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Where do most of the meteorites that hit the earth actually come from? Scientists have recently found the answer to this question.

About 70 percent of all meteorites come from just three asteroid families, the study found. Collisions within the asteroid belt created these families of asteroids, one family formed 5.8 million years ago, the second 7.5 million years ago and the third 40 million years ago.

Most asteroid families are located in the asteroid belt. This asteroid belt is located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It has numerous asteroid clusters in several parts that researchers call asteroid families.

Among these asteroid families, the asteroid family named 'Masalia' itself is responsible for 37 percent of asteroids, British daily Independent wrote in the report.

The reason these three asteroid families are producing so many asteroids is because they are still relatively young. Floating around in space and moving quickly means they can easily exit the asteroid belt and come hurtling towards Earth.

Apart from this, researchers have found more sources of meteorites. In total, researchers now know where more than 90 percent of meteorites originated.

This means that scientists have found the source of several kilometers-sized asteroids. And these asteroids can threaten the earth and they have specially looked at them in recent space missions.

Scientists say they will conduct further research on these asteroids and will focus on different asteroid families of younger ages. By doing this, they hope, they will get more information about the origin of the remaining 10 percent of meteorites.

After surveying the different families of major meteorites in the asteroid belt, scientists figured out where these meteorites came from.

They used computer simulations to understand how different asteroids collide and move around.

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The results of this research have been published in several research papers, including scientific journals 'Astronomy and Astrophysics' and 'Nature'.