Shooting Stars – Really Beautiful Or Simply Plain Unfortunate?
The beauty of a shooting star crossing the night sky is undeniable, but while for some people
this is very romantic, for others it just suggests a bad omen. The perception of the shooting star in
different parts of the world implies diverse meanings associated
with old beliefs sometimes. Thus, westerners often make a wish when they
see a falling star, while in other traditions, any shooting
star tells people that someone has passed away. Yet,
even if popular beliefs give
different explanations to these cosmic phenomena, they have a very reasonable and easy to
understand scientific background. The fact is that we incorrectly call it a shooting star, as the thing in itself has nothing
of the attributes of a real star. Click through here for extra
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A shooting star is a meteoroid, or some other boulder-sized debris form that falls on Earth and gets on fire at the entrance in the atmosphere. The friction of
the air masses, the ram pressure and the presence of the oxygen associated with the high
velocity of the meteoroid cause the resemblance
with a star. Thus, the shooting star often doesn’t even get to touch the ground as it
burns completely in the atmosphere. Big-sized meteoroids may not burn completely and they fall on the making smaller or larger craters. This time they are called
meteors.
The light specter as well as the trajectory of the shooting star allow scientists to speculate
on the structure or chemical composition of the falling body. Though noticeable with the naked eye
only at night, meteoroids and meteors also fall during
the day, but this time they are detected only by radio signals, with the sunlight making them very difficult to spot
otherwise. Thus, scientists have
determined that the weight and structure of a shooting star can vary
a lot from snowball lightness to metal heaviness. A special kind of shooting star here is
the one that passes through an atmosphere sector and gets out into space again to continue its speedy
course. You
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A very bright shooting star is called a
fireball and the measurements are made by comparing the light intensity of
the meteor with that of a planet. As beautiful
as it may look, a shooting star has a huge
destructive potential if it is not totally burned during the
passage through the atmosphere. Past collisions proved
devastating for ecosystems, with great flora and fauna damage; should such a shooting star fall in a city,
the effect would be that of a bomb attack, with
the intensity of the explosion varying according to the size of the meteorite. You will
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