MATA INDONESIA, NEW YORK – The fall meteor to the plains of the United States is quite surprising to many circles. Does this mean the apocalypse is near?
The fall of these meteors is often spectacular. On earth, some call it a shooting star. How can a meteor enter the Earth’s atmosphere or even fall to the ground and become a meteorite? Here’s the explanation
The Solar System does not only consist of the sun and planets such as Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and so on. However, in the solar system there are also objects. The names are asteroids, meteors, meteorites, and meteoroids.
The solar system in the Milky Way Galaxy is a collection of celestial bodies that revolve around its central point, the star. Or what we know as the sun.
The planets that revolve around the sun are divided into two parts, namely the inner and outer planets.
The inside includes
- Mercury
- Venus
- Earth
- Mars.
Then, the outer part consists of
- Jupiter
- Saturn
- Uranus
- Neptune.
In addition, there are components of the solar system other than planets, ranging from asteroids, meteors, meteorites, and meteoroids.
So, what exactly are the meanings and characteristics of these four terms in the solar system?
Asteroid
Are the remains of metal and chunks of rock used to form the solar system. Asteroids are irregular in size and one of them is between Mars and Jupiter.
In addition to being irregular, it turns out that asteroids have the characteristics of clustering in certain locations with a system and orbiting around the sun. This collection of asteroids is sometimes referred to as the asteroid belt, which contains hundreds of thousands of asteroids of various sizes.
The diameter of asteroids is usually about 1-750 km with a mass of about 0.0001 of the mass of the earth.
Meteoroid
Unlike asteroids which have their own path in the solar system, meteoroids do not. Meteoroids are celestial bodies, both rock and metal, that move freely without a path in space. The speed of movement is relatively fast freely around the various planets in the Milky Way galaxy, precisely in the solar system.
Meteor
When a meteoroid is accidentally attracted to a nearby planet, the meteoroid will cause a fire or hot glow because it hits the atmosphere. Meteoroids that have given rise to this glow are called meteors.
Meteors are often referred to as shooting stars or switching stars which are visible from the earth’s surface like a tail of fireball and move very quickly. Meteorites Meteors that pass through the atmosphere will usually be exhausted by burning. However, if there is still a stone left, it will fall to the earth. Rocks that were originally meteoroids and then turned into meteors are called meteorites when they reach the earth’s surface. Usually when it hits the earth, there will be an explosion due to its high temperature.
Meteors can also fall in large numbers or often referred to as meteor showers. Meteor showers usually occur when the Earth’s orbit meets the orbit of a comet. Comets will leave a large number of Meteors behind them. This condition will cause a meteor shower. It is difficult to calculate how often Meteors enter Earth’s atmosphere because there are so many and do not have an exact count. Meteorites that reach the Earth’s surface are also mostly just rocks less than half a kilogram in size.
The interesting fact is
- Every year more than 500 pieces of meteoroid shards fall from orbit to earth.
- Meteorites also vary in size, some are very small, namely 2 mm or micrometeorites. There are very large meteoroids, or often referred to as asteroids. An asteroid usually has a diameter of more than 10 meters.
- Because the meteor has burned out before touching the earth’s surface because when it enters the earth’s atmosphere, the meteor will burn up to a temperature of 1,650 degrees Celsius.
- It is estimated that there are about 30 meteor showers that can be seen from Earth every year, you know. Some meteor showers last very long, some even lasting more than 100 years. The first meteor shower recorded in human history occurred in China 2,000 years ago.
Reporter: Fadila Aliah Hakim
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