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Re: (meteorobs) Fwd: How fast do Meteors go?

John,

I agree with Lew's answer.  And I have just a few things to add:

1.  If you have ever seen the Space Shuttle, ISS, or any other satellites going
overhead they take a few minutes to pass by although they are going at
approximately 17,500 miles per hour.

2.  A meteor passes by in a second or two at the most, but their orbits are hard
to determine so we don't really know how fast they go.  Since most of them burn up
on the way down, we don't have a good record of how they got here or what they
were.

3.  So all we can do is guesstimate the speed.  Really (really, really) fast, I
think.  Unfortunately, I don't know of a good way to measure them, unless we use
Ham radio or radar.

Thank you for an inspiring question, and good luck on your report.

Your Friend,
Jim Foster


Lew Gramer wrote:

> 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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