Comments for Christopher Curtis eclectic personal thoughts and musings Mon, 18 Aug 2014 11:18:08 +0000 hourly 1 Comment on Meteors by chris Mon, 18 Aug 2014 11:18:08 +0000 The overwhelming majority of meteors are tiny things – from a grain of dust up to a small pebble. They are debris left behind either from the very beginnings of the solar system, or from the passage of a comet or (more rarely) asteroid through the solar system. The meteor showers (like the Perseids that happen in August) occur when the earth is passing through the orbit of a comet or (more rarely) asteroid which has left behind a trail of dust to burn up in our atmosphere.
Meteors are travelling very fast when they hit the earth’s atmosphere and so heat up from friction. Almost all vaporise completely far above our heads and are completely harmless. A very, very few are large enough and made of strong enough material to survive their trip through the atmosphere and land. They are then called meteorites. The American Meteor Society estimates: “As an order of magnitude estimation, each square kilometer of the earth’s surface should collect 1 meteorite fall about once every 50,000 years”. The earth is so huge, that this probably works out to be a meteorite landing somewhere about once a day! Very rarely, a meteor will be large enough to not only land, but to cause damage as it passes through the atmosphere and comes to earth (as in the recent Chelyabinsk Meteorite. Current theory suggests that the reign of the dinosaurs was ended by a very large meteorite impact
There are many more meteors visible in August nights than most nights of the year. As well as the very active Perseid meteor shower (debris left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle) there are a number of other active meteor showers. Even so, the solar system has quite a lot of dust and other small debris and so there are many more meteors than most people think. Only the very brightest are noticed at all.

Comment on Meteors by victoria Sun, 17 Aug 2014 21:11:29 +0000 I had no idea so many meteors existed or were visible in Surrey!
What happens to all these meteors heading our way? Do they cause damage on earth or burn up in the atmosphere?