Space impact by Zuzana Valkova

Meteoroids, asteroids, comets. They "fly" in the space where they are usually on their own orbits. But sometimes happen that it comes out of that orbit and come very close to Earth. And then, there is Earth's gravitation, so the object is falling down to Earth. But be calm, this is happening every 1000 years. No big deal. I hope so. I was really curious what is exactly the difference between these objects. Asteroid is big object, which can be also called minor planet or planetoid. Meteoroids are small space objects smaller than asteroids and bigger than atom or molecule. When meteoroids and asteroids enter the Earth atmosphere they are called meteors. Their composition change and they become very visible. Meteorite is piece of meteoroids or asteroids which survive the flight to Earth and after that get harder again (maybe in some cases you can even touch it). Some scientist came up with theory that all the important changes on Earth were caused by this space objects. For example the climate change, extermination of dinosaurs & all these things. Some of them think that the water in our oceans was brought by big space object. But not only the water, also the life! So what's happening during the "impact"? When the object fly through the atmosphere its getting very hot, its starts melting and is very bright, like burning fireball. When this fireball land on the ground it cause huge damages, its like atomic bomb, but of course without radiation. It can kill and damage life in area of several miles.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080129/ap_on_sc/asteroid_recalculated;_ylt=ApjkvqClo47VcjQusKEynCys0NUE

by Zuzana Valkova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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