December 13, 2008

Doomed, I Tell You! DOOOMED!

I was reading an article that discussed the fact that there's a spectacular moon out tonight when I found this at the end of it:

Another astronomical treat that could be seen tonight and for the next two nights is the annual Geminid meteor shower, one of the year’s best displays of shooting stars. Up to 100 meteors an hour can fly across the sky. The meteors, which are easy to spot with the naked eye, appear to shoot out from the constellation Gemini, hence their name, but they can be seen all over the sky. However, with a full moon so bright, the best place to look is away from the Moon.

Meteor showers happen when the Earth passes through clouds of debris shed from comets. As the tiny fragments smash into the Earth’s upper atmosphere at about 100,000mph, they burn up in streaks of light.

For reasons that are not understood, the Geminid meteor showers are tending to grow stronger each year.

Wait...What? "Growing stronger every year"? "For reasons that are not understood"? I got your reason--Maybe it's because we're hurtling towards them at galactic speeds!!

No comments:

Post a Comment