What causes meteor Showers?
Meteor showers are a cool reminder that we live on a giant ball of rock flying through space. As it circles the Sun, Earth sometimes runs into dusty debris trailing in the wake of comets — or, in the case of the Quadrantids, the wake of a small asteroid. Dust grains fall into our atmosphere, and they’re moving so fast that the friction of the air rushing past is enough to disintegrate them, creating the tiny streaks of light we see during meteor showers.
Most of our planet’s encounters with these dusty debris trails happen at about the same point in its orbit, so you can think of annual meteor showers like the Quadrantids as Earth passing a familiar landmark in space.
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