Comets and Meteors - A meteor's story
A meteor's story
As a comet hurls close to the Sun and its ice melts, pieces of rock sometimes loosen. These tiny solid remnants traveling through space are called meteoroidsA piece of debris that is traveling in space.. While the majority of meteoroids come from comets, some are fragments of planets or other celestial bodies. They are chunks of stone, metal, or a combination of the two. Wherever they originate, all meteoroids are small. Most range in size from a grain of sand to a pebble. They are the smallest known particle to orbit the Sun. They are also fast. Meteoroids are usually traveling at speeds ranging from 25,000 miles per hour (40,000 kilometers per hour) to 160,000 miles per hour (256,000 kilometers per hour).
When a speedy meteoroid tears into Earth's atmosphere, the layer of air encircling our planet, it produces a streak of light known as a shooting...
[The entire page is 518 words long]
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