Showing posts with label metiors hitting earth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label metiors hitting earth. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Bigger Fatter Earth

Humans are not the only ones getting heavier. The earth moon and the planets are also getting heavier! I am hoping that the world's fattest astronomer Dr Gerald "Teddy" Bear has time to discuss this. Dr Bear is kinda like a fat Bill Nye the science guy in that he is an ambassador for free thinking, rational thought and science.

 

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-ZGIRLXj5YoI/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAB30/NPMMj6Dv22k/s120-c/photo.jpg
Dr Bear demonstrating his sun viewer!

 The Earth gets 100 tons heavier each day.


This massive daily weight gain can be blamed on about 100 tons of meteoroids (fragments of dust, gravel, and even big rocks) entering the Earth’s atmosphere each day. If you stand under the stars for more than half an hour on a clear night you’re more than likely to see a few of these meteors.

However even after centuries of watching these meteors majestically tear through the night sky and trying to make them grant our wishes, we still haven’t managed to figure out where exactly they all originate from.

Do they come from the asteroid belt? Are they created in a comet’s death throes? Are they random pieces of space junk? NASA is now attempting to answer these questions with a network of smart cameras scattered all across the United States. So far these cameras tell scientists the size of every single meteor in the night sky, track their orbits, calculate their trajectory through the atmosphere, and determine whether and if so where, they will hit Earth.

Hopefully, as the technology develops and as patterns are spotted, scientists will be able to pinpoint where all these meteors are coming from too.

Read more here!