Have you ever seen a star suddenly fall from the sky while looking at the dark sky at night? We’ve all seen it once or twice in our lifetime. Besides, many people think and believe that if you make a wish in your mind while watching a shooting star, it will come true.
However, are shooting-stars or falling stars really a star that is falling from space? Or something else? What is this shooting-star and why do we see them fall like this? Let's talk about this today. When we make a wish to a shooting-star, it is good to know at least that what we are actually wishing for is the genius.
As I said before, maybe you know these things long ago. If you know, ignore this post. There are many who do not yet know the science behind shooting stars. If you don't know anything about this yet, you can read it if you want. And yes, all the images used in this post are artificial, used only for decoration.
What is an asteroid?
If we want to know about the shooting star, we need to know a few more things first. Not too much, we need to know about some of the cosmic objects roaming our solar system, called asteroids and asteroid belts.
Is this our solar system, or solar system, right? Like this map, maps of almost all solar systems show only the sun and all the planets in the solar system. But not only the sun and its planets are in the solar system. There is so much more. This is a huge distance between each planet but not completely empty. In addition to these planets and satellites, there are many other objects in space that are not usually focused on the map of the solar system. There is no reason to focus though. In addition to the planets around the solar system on the map below, what you see as a belt is the asteroid belt.
The belt of this asteroid is mainly in the middle position between Mars and Jupiter. These asteroids are basically nothing scary. These are usually some large and medium sized objects, which are made of such materials as stone, iron, silicon. Asteroid belts are made of this type of asteroid.
What is a shooting-star?
And we know the shooting-star by the name of shooting star. However in scientific language it is called, meteroid or shortened, meteor. This shooting star or meteoride is a small fragment of these cosmic asteroids, which are basically made of iron or silicate or a combination of the two. For the sake of understanding, think of an asteroid orbiting you in space. An explosion occurred on this asteroid for one reason or another and this asteroid was destroyed due to an impact. This caused the asteroid to split into many smaller parts. These little parts are the meteor or what we call the shooting star.
When these asteroids are destroyed, these tiny particles of asteroids begin to move freely in space. But problems arise when these meteors move closer to Earth's orbit. We already know that the gravitational force on Earth creates an invisible orbit around the Earth, which allows the Earth's satellites and space stations to revolve around the Earth. When these meteors move closer to the Earth's orbit, the Earth naturally attracts them.
And because of this force of gravity, these meteors rush towards the earth at an incredible speed. And when they come to the earth at such a speed, of course, they rub against the earth's atmosphere. And if an object coming at such a speed rubs against the Earth's atmosphere, it must produce a huge amount of heat due to friction. And because of this heat, these meteors catch fire and because of the fire, they become bright white. And when these meteors burn through the Earth's atmosphere and into our visible sky, we basically see them coming, and when we look at them, they look like a lot of falling stars, so we named them shooting stars.
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