Shooting Stars – Very Beautiful Or Just Plain Unfortunate?
There is something very peculiar about
watching a shooting star, as the effect it has on people greatly varies from individual to individual
and from culture to culture. The perception of the shooting star in
different parts of the world is both varied and suggestive. 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. Beautiful and great as a shooting star may be, it is just a
false star. Click through here for more
information relating to horoscope.
A shooting star is a meteoroid, or some form of
debris that enters
Earth’s atmosphere and gets on fire. 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. Larger meteoroids that don’t burn completely because of their
size 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
concluded that a shooting star can be light and fragile like a snowball
or heavy and dense because of the hard metal core. A very unusual phenomenon is that of a shooting star that passes through just a sector of the
atmosphere without burning completely before resuming its journey in outer space. You
should find complimentary
valuable information relating to horoscope compatibility here.
A shooting star with a high burning intensity is called a
fireball and the measurements result from comparing the light intensity of
the meteor with that of a planet. As beautiful
as it may look, a shooting star can often cause great damage on Earth’s surface if it is not totally combusted during the
flight through the atmosphere. Past collisions were
devastating for ecosystems, with vegetation and animal
losses; should such a shooting star fall in a city,
the impact would be that of a bomb dropping, with
the intensity of the explosion varying according to the size of the meteorite. You should
find oodles of supplemental
valuable information on horoscopes compatibility
here.
More Education Articles