You Can Survive!
To Catch A Shooting Star
by Carol Camelot
July 7, 2010

A British teenager saw a large ball of light coming towards him rapidly. Suddenly he felt a pain in his hand and then heard an enormous bang like a crash of thunder. It was a one-in-a-million chance to be hit by a meteorite, and it chose Gerrit Blank for the honor.

“The noise that came after the flash of light was so loud that my ears were ringing for hours afterwards. When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself into the road,” he explained. The pea-sized rock caused a foot-wide crater in the ground in June of 2009.

Meteors are known colloquially as shooting stars or falling stars which zing through the air day and night. When many can be counted, they are collectively called a “meteor shower.” If a meteor hits the ground and survives the impact, then it is referred to as a “meteorite.” Stony meteorites consist of silicates principally while others are composed mostly of iron.

Millions of meteors travel through Earth’s atmosphere daily and are generally the size of a pebble. But they have roughly a 50 percent possibility of colliding with Earth’s surface – or a human unawares.
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) defines a fireball as a “meteor brighter than any of the planets” (magnitude -4 or greater). Such “fireballs” are also called “bolides” and are of especial interest to geologists as they study large incoming rocks which impact the Earth, causing craters. However, astronomers use the term “bolide” to refer to an exceptionally bright fireball, particularly one that explodes into smaller fragments.

With the temperatures in the 80s and low 90s at night in the High Desert and Coachella Valley, people can sit outside and gaze upwards to watch for these somewhat elusive and lovely shooting stars. If you do happen to witness a memorable passage, the American Meteor Society would be most interested in hearing about it. The easiest way to report a fireball or meteorite sighting is to contact them at
www.amsmeteors.org/fireballs.html.


The singer Perry Como immortalized meteorites when he was recorded in 1957 singing a romantic ballad called “Catch a Falling Star.” Of course, 14-year old Gerrit in Great Britain did not manage to catch one, but he certainly had a close encounter of the third kind.

Astronomers and astrophysicists have off and on over the years warned leaders of the world that some sort of an advance warning system needs to be implemented. A meteorite labeled 2000YA passed by our planet just 800,000 kilometers from Earth, speeding at 36 km/second. But it was detected after it had left our atmosphere.

On June 14, 2002, asteroid 2002MN having about 100 meters in length passed by at 120,000 kilometers (less than one-third of the distance between our Moon and Earth). Scientists only discovered it three days later!

In Peru a meteorite fell in September of 2007 which blew out a crater that measured 30 meters in diameter and six meters in depth. The residents nearby in Carancas near the Bolivian border began complaining of headaches and respiratory ailments. It seems that fumes of some sort, perhaps of sulfur or ammonia, were spreading afterwards in the area.
The English version of online Russian newspaper Pravda in January 2003 quoted Robin Scagell, vice-president of the British Society for Popular Astronomy who said, “Now we start realizing that we are living in a world that is a real shooting range in fact. Until now, mankind was lucky.”

No doubt our ancestors living in forests, jungles and caves looked up the sky and wondered about these fast moving flashes of light which disappeared. Phenomenas such as these in our skies, day or night, have fascinated humankind for eons.

“Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, save it for a rainy day. For love may come and tap you on the shoulder some starless night. And just in case you wanna hold her, you’ll have a pocketful of starlight.”
Don’t let the summer pass you by without some romancing under the stars.