At what speed does a meteor fall through the earth's atmosphere?
399357
Meteors enter the atmosphere at speeds ranging from 11 km/sec (25,000 mph), to 72 km/sec (160,000 mph!). When the meteoroid collides with air molecules, its high level of kinetic energy rapidly ionizes and excites a long, thin column of atmospheric atoms along the meteoroid's path, creating a flash of light visible from the ground below. This column, or meteor trail, is usually less than 1 meter in diameter, but will be tens of kilometers long
1139438
It is more like falling around the Sun. Earth is always falling into the Sun, but it's sideways orbital speed keeps moving Earth to the side of it's direction of fall. So the direction it would have to fall to hit the sun is different and Earth has to start over to get up speed falling in the new direction. This just keeps going on forever, falling toward the Sun but always missing it to one side. Of course, this takes enormous speed on the part of the Earth, about 66,000 miles per hour sideways all the time.
565199
falling at the standard rate of 32 feet per second per second until the average human reaches a velocity of approximately 135 mph at which time air resistance begins holding the falling body from falling faster. \n   32 feet 1st sec; 64 feet 2nd sec.; 128 feet 3rd sec; etc until the body reaches 135 mph.
184235
The term meteor comes from the Greek meteoron, meaning phenomenon in the sky. It is used to describe the streak of light produced as matter in the solar system falls into Earth's atmosphere creating temporary incandescence resulting from atmospheric friction. This typically occurs at heights of 80 to 110 kilometers (50 to 68 miles) above Earth's surface. The term is also used loosely with the word meteroid referring to the particle itself without relation to the phenomena it produces when entering the Earth's atmosphere. A meteoroid is matter revolving around the sun or any object in interplanetary space that is too small to be called an asteroid or a comet. Even smaller particles are called micrometeoroids or cosmic dust grains, which includes any interstellar material that should happen to enter our solar system. A meteorite is a meteoroid that reaches the surface of the Earth without being completely vaporized.
466291
The speed of sound varies depending on the material it is travelling through, the pressure, altitude and temperature.\n\nOn the assumption you're talking about air and that you're at sea level under normal atmospheric conditions then 340m/s would be the speed at 14 degrees C and 330m/s would be the speed at minus 1 degree C - so they're both right.
94632
Assuming (1) the Earth isn't torn apart by the impact of such a meteor and (2) the Earth wasn't molten rock in the center, you could safely expect this ball to go through the hole toward the center of the Earth, pass through the center and start moving towards the opposite end of the Earth.\n\nBecause the ball won't have gained enough kinetic energy to then break away from Earth's gravity (in the same way a pendulum always comes back and finally, to rest), the ball will then slow to a stop and return back towards the center.  Just as a pendulum will, the ball will oscillate back and forth for a while until its potential energy evens out to zero and it stops, motionless, at the exact center of the Earth.\n\nGive it a try and let us know how it all works out, okay?
1185571
a meteor is going to pass very close to the earth on that day...check out\nhttp://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?at_code=341846
317623
i believe the formula is\n\n16 foot per second per second\nor\n16ft + 32ft + 48ft + 64ft + ect....\n1 sec, 2 sec, 3 sec, 4 sec, ect....\nadding 16 foot for each additional second\nuntil you are adding the terminal velocity for each second.\nthe terminal velocity is the fastest something can fall.\nthe terminal velocity changes with the shape and mass\nof the falling object.\nexample : a piece of paper vs a sphere of lead\nyour ball would be approx. 96 ft of the way down\nor 4 ft off the ground, provided it wasn't Styrofoam.
1113520
Earth is rotating at a speed of about 1100 miles per hour. If our planet suddenly stopped rotating, the atmosphere would still be in motion at that speed. The atmosphere would be moving so fast it would literally sweep the land masses clear of anything not anchored to bedrock, this would mean rocks, soil, trees, buildings, people and animals. All would be swept up into the atmosphere.
556627
A shooting star is not actually a star.  It is a meteor.\n\nA meteor is the light you see when a meteoroid comes in contact with the Earth's atmosphere.  The "ram pressure" of this object, which is usually rock or rock + iron, smacking into our atmosphere creates heat, and the meteor begins to burn.\n\nWhen our Solar System was forming, there was a lot of junk left over.  If our Earth's orbit intersects with this junk, it will burn in our atmosphere.  \n\nMost meteoroids are tiny (dust and pebble sized) and burn up before they can reach the Earth.  Some hit the atmosphere the wrong way and skip across it like a stone thrown to skip across a lake, and eventually escape, albeit somewhat smaller now.  Some manage to hit the Earth.  There's one in the Adler Planetarium in Chicago that is huge, about three feet long and a foot through the middle.  (When they make it to the groud they are called meteorites.)\n\nMeteor can come one at a time, but there are also meteor showers, times during the year when you can expect to see a lot of meteors (10-80 per hour).  This happens when the Earth passes through the trail left by a comet.  Meteor showers are named for the constellation from which they appear to radiate.  The most famous is the Perseids, which radiate from Perseus, and are associated with the comet Swift-Tuttle.
25248
First of all, there is no fixed end to the atmosphere: it gradually fades away to the density of interplanetary space.  However, the effective "top" of the atmosphere is often taken to be 60 miles (100 km), the altitude at which a (typical) unpowered satellite could make one orbit before air drag slowed it and caused it to fall.\nTo reach this altitude only requires that an object be headed upward, no matter how slowly.  To move upward requires that the object have some force propeling it which is at least slightly greater than the force of gravity pulling it down.  This force of gravity lessens with altitude, which is why a rocket needs a lot of power to take off, but little to maneuver in orbit.  Thus there is no minimum speed needed to reach the "top" of the atmosphere.\nHowever, the orbital velocity needed to stay in orbit is that velocity which just equals the downward pull of gravity, so orbital speed depends on the altitude of the satellite: it goes down with altitude.  (For example, at a typical low-orbit altitude of a couple hundred miles or so, the speed is around 17,000 miles per hour and the orbital period for one orbit is around an hour and a half; the Moon, 238,000 miles away, moves about 2000 mph and takes 28 days to orbit once. For mathematical details, see references on Kepler's Laws.
209347
"...Small stones to a few millimeters in size are slowed down so much by the atmosphere that they end up drifting slowly to the ground. \n\nPieces of space rock of a few millimeters to a few centimeters burn up completely in the atmosphere of the Earth before they can reach the ground, and can be seen at night as falling stars. If it is sufficiently dark and clear outside, then you can see a few falling stars every night. \n\nIf the rock is bigger, then part of it can survive the trip through the atmosphere and reach the ground as a meteorite. If the stone weighs less than a few tons, then it doesn't fall very fast anymore in the end, and it makes a small dent in the ground.   "\n\nhttp://www.phys.uu.nl/~strous/AA/en/antwoorden/meteorieten.html
1001756
Technically the earth is falling, but it's speed traveling in orbit around the sun is keeping it in the same plane. For example the rate of fall is exactly the same as the rate the earth is traveling.
846875
During most of the shower activity you'll be lucky to see one Leonid meteor every ten minutes, which can be an eternity standing out in the cold with your neck craned up. However, there is a good chance that Earth will pass through a particularly dense ribbon of comet dust for a few minutes at  4:45 UT on Sunday morning Nov 19. That's 11:45pm Saturday night in New York. Unfortunately it's too early for us on the west coast, because at 8:45 pm our time we are "looking off the back of the boat" as Earth sails through the rocks.  All the incoming meteors tend to hit above people facing the direction of Earth's orbit around the sun, which is the direction we start to face only after local midnite. A predicted rate for favorable locations (mostly western Europe or the Altantic Ocean) at 04:45 UT is 150 meteors per hour. Such figures presume a horizon to horizon view of clear sky and no light pollution. If I haven't discouraged you too much, and the Saturday night sky is clear for both of you, and you can stay awake after midnite, then by all means put on something really really warm and go outside and enjoy the stars, and the occasional Leonid meteor.  You'll get no interference from the moon this weekend.
1100487
Because the earth orbits the sun in the same direction as its daily spin, we are on the "trailing" side of the globe before midnight. This means that meteoroids must "catch up" to us in order to burn up in our atmosphere, and will be slower (and so fainter) when they do. After midnight of course, the situation is reversed... The result is that you usually see many more meteors near dawn than near dusk!
1129368
Wow I think the guy above me is a couple of sandwiches shy of a picnic basket. Here's part of a news story about it on slashdot.\n\n\nRecord Meteorite Hits Norway \nPosted by Zonk on Friday June 09, @08:44PM\nfrom the duck dept. \n  equex256 writes \n"Early Wednesday morning, a meteorite streaked across the sky in northern Norway, near Finland and Russia. A witness (Article in Norwegian) went up the mountain to where it hit and reported seeing large boulders that had fallen out of the mountainside, along with many broken trees. Norwegian astronomer Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard told Aftenposten, Norway's largest newspaper, that he would compare the explosive force of the impact with the Hiroshima bomb. This meteorite is suspected to be much larger than the 90-kilo (198-pound) meteorite which hit Alta in 1904, previously recognized as the largest to hit Norway. From the article: 'Røed Ødegaard said the meteorite was visible to an area of several hundred kilometers despite the brightness of the midnight sunlit summer sky. The meteorite hit a mountainside in Reisadalen in North Troms.'"
1117857
Ok there are no known meteors that are going to "kill all Earth's life", and I highly doubt you'll be the one to find them while the highly trained astronomers do not. You'll need a very large opening (lens, the big opening at the top) to find meteors that far away. Power (magnification) is not important when the opening is very small. I'm sure you're asking this because of a meteor that is supposedly passing by on the 3rd at the 12th magnitude (you'll need a very good telescope and you can't see it with the naked eye).