Chapter 17 Section 3 Meteor Showers and Meteorites

Looking up at the sky at night, you will often see a flash of white light, which is a shooting star.There are often sporadic meteors, which is not surprising.However, sometimes you can see as many meteors as raindrops, and they all radiate from a common point in the sky. This is a meteor shower.According to modern research, meteors or meteor showers are small pieces of matter running in the space of the solar system. When they break into the earth's atmosphere, they glow due to friction and combustion with the atmosphere.If it falls to the ground without burning out, it becomes a meteorite.If many pieces fall to the ground at the same time, it becomes a meteor shower.

Meteor showers do not occur on any day, only when the earth passes through the meteor shower belt, there will be meteor showers.The fine matter that forms the meteor shower is mostly formed by the space of the solar system after the disintegration of comets and planets.When a meteor shower occurs, from the ground, it seems that they all come from a common point in the sky, which is called the radiant point.The Lyrid meteor group and the Leonid meteor group are famous meteor groups. There are also many records about meteor showers in China. For example, "Bamboo Book Chronicles" records: "Eight years of Emperor Yu Xiahou's family rained gold in Xiayi", which was a meteor shower that landed in Henan Province in 2133 BC. The earliest records about meteor showers have been recorded continuously since then. The ancients often used "stars fall like rain" and "meteors like weaving" to describe.

The phenomenon of meteorites falling to the ground is also a frequent occurrence. When meteorites fall to the ground, they become aliens.There are two kinds of meteorites, one is iron and the other is stone. Song Yingxing, a scientist in the late Ming Dynasty, said: "Stars fall into stone." Shen Kuo, a scientist in Song Dynasty, investigated three meteorite explosions in one night in 1064 AD, and wrote in "Dream "Xi Bi Tan" records in detail the meteorite that fell in Xu's Garden in Yixing: "From far and near, you can see the fire shining brightly into the sky, and Xu's fences are all burned. When the fire died down, looking at the ground, only one hole was as big as a cup. Very deep. Looking down, the stars are in it, shining brightly. After a long time, it is getting darker, but it is still hot and cannot be approached. After a long time, the orifice is found to be more than three feet deep, and there is a stone, which is still hot. It is as big as a fist, and the end is slightly sharp. It looks like iron, and it weighs as much."