• Question: why have no meteors hit earth yet

    Asked by Howard to Aaron, Abbey, Keith, Natalie, Pete on 13 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Aaron Boardley

      Aaron Boardley answered on 13 Nov 2015:

      They have – it happens all the time. Most of them are really small and burn up in the atmosphere. Have you ever seen a shooting star? This is a meteor streaking through the sky and lighting up as it burns up.

      Occasionally some bigger ones come down and cause a bit more excitement. There was a significant one a couple of years ago that exploded over Russia – you may have seen it on the news. Search YouTube for ‘Chelyabinsk meteor’ – there’s some great footage!

    • Photo: Natalie Garrett

      Natalie Garrett answered on 13 Nov 2015:

      As Aaron said, they do hit the earth a lot. Thankfully, not too many make it to us though. You will have heard of Jupiter, it’s a really big planet in our solar system – it can hoover up a lot of meteors (and asteroids and comets) because it pulls them in with its large gravitational field. Without Jupiter, we might not have been able to have life on earth because of all the large impacts.

      Here’s an article about it: http://gizmodo.com/5942503/amateur-astronomer-spots-massive-explosion-on-jupiter

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