yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Meteor Showers 101 | National Geographic


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

They light up the sky and fall toward Earth at speeds 32 times faster than a speeding bullet. Meteor showers have been mesmerizing us for centuries, and they're a beautiful reminder that we are part of a busy and mystical solar system.

But what exactly are meteor showers? Where do they come from, and are they dangerous to humans? This is Meteor Showers 101. A meteor shower occurs when the trail of interplanetary debris, like the one left behind by comets or asteroids, enters the Earth's atmosphere. The interplanetary debris is mostly made up of space rocks, also called meteoroids.

As the meteoroids fall toward Earth, they produce drag throughout the rock. This causes the meteoroid to heat up. The streak of intensity we see is the hot air left behind the burning rock. When Earth encounters many meteoroids at once, we call it a meteor shower.

Meteor showers are usually named for the constellation in which their radiant appears. The most common and famous meteor showers are Perseids, Leonids, Geminids, and Lyrids. However, it is estimated that there are around 21 meteor showers every year, with most of them occurring between August and December.

Meteors enter Earth's atmosphere at speeds ranging from 25,000 mph to 160,000 mph. It's frightening to imagine all that interplanetary debris flying toward us. Cameras around the world have captured meteors falling from the sky, and although some eventually hit, most of them disintegrate or burn off.

The remaining pieces fall into the ocean. When they survive the fall and hit land, we call them meteorites. Scientists estimate that most meteors are the size of a pebble. In fact, 99% of the approximately 50 tons of space debris that falls on the Earth's surface every day is of that size.

Some meteorites, however, are as large as boulders. The largest meteorite found on Earth is the Hoba meteorite, discovered in Namibia in 1920. It weighs roughly 119,000 lb. It's meteors of that magnitude—and potentially bigger ones—that inspire scientists to dedicate their careers to understanding how they form and how they travel through our solar system. In order to better comprehend them and look for ways to reduce their damage.

More Articles

View All
A Wicked Tongue | Wicked Tuna
[Music] Let’s go fishing! It’s week five, and we’ve caught three fish so far. But last trip, things got a little rocky with my mates, Brad and Lance. “Ask you one simple thing and you flip the out! This is my boat! I’m the captain! I’m the boss! And tha…
Safari Live - Day 384 | National Geographic
This program features live coverage of an African safari and may include animal kills and carcasses. Viewer discretion is advised. Well, we couldn’t have asked for a better way to start our Sunday than the brand-new “Oh balls of fluff” for the Inkuhuma p…
Cave Art 101 | National Geographic
[Narrator] Wooly mammoths, step bison, and other large mammals once roamed alongside people across Eurasia. Tens of thousands of years later, we may have a glimpse into this Ice Age world through the cave art left behind by early humans. (tinkling music) …
Is Time Travel Possible?: Mind Blow (Special Edition)
John tier claims to be a time traveler from the year 2036, and his time machine kind of looks like a certain DeLorean whose parts you can actually buy. Vauce Kevin here; this is Mind Blow: Time Travel Edition. This is a real time machine, sort of. Dr. Ron…
Three Awesome High School Science Projects
By the end of this video, one of these three high school seniors will be awarded two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for their original scientific research. Now, the way this went down was, Regeneron, the sponsor of this video, invited me out to Washi…
Measuring angles with a circular protractor | Math | 4th grade | Khan Academy
Measure the angle in degrees. So here we have this blue angle that we want to measure in degrees, and it’s sitting on top of this circle. That circle is actually a protractor. Sometimes we see, and maybe what you’re used to seeing, is protractors that are…