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(meteorobs) Fwd: How fast do Meteors go?
John <CCKC111@aol.com> writes:
>Dear Sirs,
>
>I have a report to do in school. I am 9 years old. I need to know how
>fast meteors travel. Do you know the answer?
>
>Thanks, John
John, what a great question! Would you do me a favor? Print out this response
from me, and take the printout in to your school teacher? Thanks!
I have forwarded your question to our whole mailing list of 550 people around
the world, so you can tell your teacher that you researched the answer to this
question all over the globe. (And I also thought some of our members might be
inspired by your question, John!)
THE ANSWER to your question is that meteor pieces are going AT LEAST 25,000
miles per hour when they hit our atmosphere. That is faster than the Space
Shuttle ever goes! And if we hit one of these meteor pieces - we call them
"meteoroids" - it may even be going as fast as 160,000 m.p.h.! That is much
faster than anything people have ever built.
The really neat part is, though, that even if you could take a meteor piece
and hold it so it was "standing still" in space, it would still smack into
Earth's atmosphere at 80,000 m.p.h.! Why?? Because the Earth is moving at
about that speed around the Sun every day. :-)
Take care, and thank you for the question,
Lew Gramer <owner-meteorobs@jovian.com>
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