NoMoSloMo
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Shooting Star or Falling Star?
As I ran this morning I happen to see two shooting stars. For me shooting stars seem to turn even the most ordinary run into something magical. So I made my wish and continued on my way back home. Looking up at the stars I began to wonder if you can even wish on shooting stars. Wishes as I remember are reserved for the first star of the night. At least that is the way the song goes. Running along, singing starlight starbright it hit me. Is it shooting star or falling star? Is there a difference? I couldn't decide. The thought banged around the vast expanse I call my cranium and I came to a conclusion. Falling star sounds to negative. The idea that a star is taking its final journey doesn't leave much to the imagination just an end. I'd like to think that a shooting star travels on to greet another early morning gazer.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I'm sure it was a Plutonian UFO burning up on re-entry on its way to get back at us for the whole planet/no planet thing.
Good morning for a 10K, 7 degrees up here. I got out for 30 minutes, didn't fall once. Got called "F***ing Crazy" from a van. I took that as a compliment. If they only knew I'd be running a 26.2 trail run Saturday.
I'll forward your pontification to a physics professor I know... at least he can BS a good definition between falling and shooting.
Good call on the Plutonian UFO. Come to think about it I did feel a strange tingling near my Uranus region right before I saw the shooting stars.
Very good mornig for a 10k. I thought the same thing as I poked my head out of the front door this morning. The roads were a little icy but overall it wasn't to bad. It is funny you should mention the van. Normally people zoom right by me but since road conditions were not to favorable for driving they had to slow down. A truck I see every morning actually gave a little honk which like you I took as a compliment. To bad I will only be running a measily 5k compared to your 26.2 trail run this Saturday showoff.
I'm not sure if I can BS a distinction between falling star and shooting star. Both terms, I believe, are colloquial forms of what those in the biz call a meteor.
A meteor is formed when a chunk of space rock or dust enters Earth's atmosphere as the planet goes on its annual trip around the Sun. Most of the meteors you see are formed by rocks no larger than a grain of sand, and potentially only slightly larger than a speck of dust. It is for this reason that most of the meteors end up burning up on their way through the atmosphere and never reach the surface of the Earth.
But, space is big and there is a LOT of dust and rock out there, and so a large number (but small percentage of the total) do end up reaching the surface. When they hit ground, they are no longer called meteors, they are called meteorites.
I do like to point out to my students that the atmosphere is roughly 200 miles thick, so meteors are streaking through the sky somewhere between ground level and 200 miles above our heads. That's a lot closer to Earth than the stars are. The nearest star is roughly 4 light years away, which means the meteor is over 100,000,000,000 times closer than the nearest star. It's just another reminder that space is big. Really BIG. And since space is so big, you don't have to go all that far to start to get to it.
You may also be interested to know (or maybe not...) that when a star dies it does fall. But, it falls in on itself. At the end of the star's life after it has run out of fuel to fuse into heavier elements, the radiation pressure it had been producing is no longer strong enough to balance the self-gravitational force of the star's own mass. So the star collapses. If it is a massive star (at least 1.4 times as massive as our Sun) at the time it dies, it will go supernova. The supernova event is a massive release of energy and a production of many heavy elements that otherwise would never have formed. Supernovae can be so bright that some have been seen in daylight. (But, they are somewhat rare in our galaxy and nearly impossible to predict when they will occur.) Nevertheless, keep looking up, and you never know what you might see on your next run.
Thank you Andrew for your very informative comment. I do spend quite a bit of time gazing at the stars during my runs. There really isn't that much else to look at 4:oo in the morning except for the occassional deer or car.I will also let you know that your remarkable response will most likely be the most intelligent thing ever posted on this blog! I hope not but thanks for setting the bar so high.
Post a Comment