Do you ever wonder what causes shooting stars? These space rocks also called meteors cause us to see shooting stars.
Small pieces of space debris, and sometimes even larger ones, enter Earth’s atmosphere. These rocks travel more than eight miles per second, which causes them to rub against the air and burn. This shows a streak of light called a meteor, or shooting star. When debris is in space, it is a meteoroid, but when it hits Earth, it is called a meteorite.
Some meteoroids come from asteroids—the rocks that circle between Mars and Jupiter—that journey in large elliptical orbits around the Universe. Meteoroids form when asteroids crash with each other and pieces of rocks come off. They also form when the sun boils comet’s ice and leaves a trail of dust. This debris turns out to be small meteoroids that could possibly enter Earth’s atmosphere.
All sizes of meteorites can be dangerous. Even though some meteorites are small enough to hold in your fist, if meteorites are large, they can create craters on Earth and cause serious damage.
Small or big, meteors are a lot of trouble, but they’re also very interesting. They work in such big ways for being such small rocks.
[Source:
Children’s Atlas Of The Universe
]
