Maybe you had to see a shooting star trace a fiery trail in the night sky? The impression is as if one of the stars fell from the sky and fell to the Earth. From a distance, indeed, you can confuse a star with a meteorite, but in reality these are completely different things.
What is the difference between stars, meteorites and asteroids
Stars are huge luminous globular clusters of hot gas that look small only because they are very far from us. Our Sun is a medium-sized star, but a million such planets as the Earth can fit in it.
Meteorites those that burn so brightly in heaven are solids. Usually these are pieces of stone, metal or ice, broken off from comets or asteroids. Often in size, these fragments do not exceed a pea. Like pieces of clay scattered around a finished sculpture.
Asteroids are large stone fragments formed during the formation of planets from a gas-dust cloud. A large cluster of asteroids revolves around the Sun in the space between Mars and Jupiter.
Where do meteorites come from?
When asteroids collide, and they occur billions of years, their fragments scatter in different directions. These fragments, called meteorites, travel very long distances, because in the void of interplanetary space there is no friction force that could slow down their flight. The sizes of meteorites range from a grain of sand to a boulder and more. Dark and invisible, they rush in the eternal cold and darkness of space.When meteorites fly near the Earth, the force of gravity begins to act on them. This is how some meteorites enter the Earth’s atmosphere, flying into it at a speed of 30 to 200 thousand kilometers per hour.
A bright trail when falling to Earth
Typically, stone and metal meteorites are captured by gravity and fall to the Earth through the atmosphere. In this case, stone and metal fragments are heated to a very high temperature. The reason for this warming up is friction. Try to rub your hand on the carpet, you will feel the heat - this is also the result of friction. On spaceships, a special skin layer protects the crew and the ship from the thermal effects of friction.
Meteorites have no such casing and there is no one to protect them. Therefore, small meteorites simply burn in the atmosphere from high temperature. They flare up in the sky and burn out like candles, leaving behind only ash. Large meteorites can survive a journey through the atmosphere, and then stone rain falls on Earth.
In 1980, a family in Connecticut, sitting at the dining table, suddenly heard a strange sound from the sky. A second later, a small meteorite fell on the table, breaking through the roof. After amazement and delight caused by the event, the meteorite, which managed to cool down, was solemnly handed over to the museum. We so rarely hear such stories that we could assume that meteorites rarely collide with the Earth. In fact, this is far from the case. In the 4.6 billion years that the Earth and the Moon exist, there have been many such collisions.
On the moon it is very easy to find traces of collisions with meteorites. These are the famous moon craters. On Earth, most of the craters disappeared. Some hid under the water of the oceans, others were covered with volcanic ash or litas by lava, while others underwent erosion and weathering over millions of years.
