Shooting stars are not stars that are falling. They are meteors. But from where do meteors come from? What are the types of meteors falling?

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Meteors

Meteors (by Google ©)

Shooting stars are not stars that are falling. They are meteors. But from where do meteors come from? What are the types of meteors falling? And what is the difference between a meteor, a meteorite, and an asteroid?

Meteors are objects falling to earth, which can be debris that is as small as a strawberry, some as big as a minor asteroid. The types of meteors are-

1. Falling meteors - This category includes the meteors ranging from a strawberry to a book. These burn in the mesosphere and are known as shooting stars. Their remnants can survive and touch the ground but they mostly burn up in the sky.
2. Fireball Meteor - These meteors range from a book to a car. These catch up the fire and produce a tail of light and land on the ground. They don't cause much damage.
3. Air-burst Meteor - These are meteors ranging from a car to a house. These are the meteors that not only burn up, but after reaching a certain point of time burning, they explode. This causes damage not only to the place about to get hit but also to the surrounding areas. For instance, The Chelyabinsk meteor explosion in 2013 occurred in Chelyabinsk city in Russia.
4. Meteorite - These are the meteors that are bigger than a house. They can survive the burning and hit the ground at a high velocity and create a crater (depressions). I will explain the formation of craters in an upcoming post.

According to estimations, 70% of all meteorites hit the ocean. 27% of the meteorites usually end up hitting an uninhabited place such as the Sahara Desert or Eastern Siberia where there is barely any population. But 3% can hit a populated city. For a typical city, like New York, it would spell disaster as the shockwave and destruction caused by the impact would destroy the city as a whole.

Asteroids are objects which are smaller than moons and orbit the sun. These can be as big as 100 meters to 15 km in diameter. For example, the Chicxulub asteroid, which was 15 km in diameter is the reason for the mass extinction in the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago. This caused the end of the dinosaurs. The asteroids have the potential to wipe out humanity in one impact. So scientists have kept an eye on asteroids because their orbits are crossing the orbit of Earth. If both were at the same place, it would hit the earth.

NASA has started the first mission of planetary defence against asteroids by sending the DART (Double-Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft targeting Didymos B asteroid (or Dimorphos) in the Didymos Binary system to see if kinetic impacts can alter the orbit of asteroids. DART would impact Dimorphos on September 27, 2022. 

Thank you for reading.

Aditya VN Kadiyala