Is a shooting star really the size of a grain of sand?
468156
Most--not all--shooting stars (meteors) are about the size of a grain of sand. Most of these specks are left-over material from comets that have passed in and out of the inner solar system.\n\nGod should be spelled B-I-G B-A-N-G\nPBrax@netscape.com
1103870
Planets do not twinkle the way stars do. In fact, this is a good way of figuring out if a particular object you see in the sky is a planet or a star. The reason is that stars are so far away that they are essentially points of light on the sky, while planets actually have finite size. The size of a planet on the sky in a sense "averages out" the turbulent effects of the atmosphere, presenting a relatively stable image to the eye.
573022
Howdy! :)\n\nNeat & tricky question! :) I love these kinds of questions. :) Ok, as another user said, nothing:\n\nNothing is greater than the universe.\n\nThe concept of "nothing" is smaller than a grain of sand. Not to confuse that with the assertion that there is no thing that is smaller than a grain of sand, as billions of microscopic organisms, particles & sub-atomic particles would testify otherwise!\n\nDead people eat nothing!\n\nIf I, you, or any other living human being were to eat nothing, we would die!\n\nGreat question! :) Take very good care & have yourself a most joyous day, every day. :)\n\nLove And Light\nCogano
315882
I don't know if it theoretically possible; I suppose you could see a grain of sand as a microcosm of the world or universe. \n\nPoetically:\n\nTo see a world in a grain of sand\nAnd a heaven in a wild flower, \nHold infinity in the palm of your hand\nAnd eternity in an hour.\n\n--William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
930317
Not even close.  If Jupiter were about 13 times bigger, it MAY (stress - MAY) have experienced deuterium fusion for a few thousand years, then died.  Significantly larger - 65 times or so, would fuse deuterium and lithium, but again, only for a very short time.  However, Brown dwarfs have convective surfaces and interiors, meaning the layers are constantly churning and mixing due to heat.  Under about 13 times Jupiter's size, the body is separated into layers and considered a planet.\n\nThe tiniest stars capable of full fusion are, at a minimum, about 100 times larger than Jupiter.  \n\nHowever, and this is the weird part, we're talking about mass, and the main differentiator is how that mass reacts and what forces are in play.  Which means Jupiter, the Brown Dwarfs, and the tiniest smallest stars are all about the same physical size, just massively different densities.
735634
Scientists using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered and directly imaged a small brown dwarf star, 50 times the mass of Jupiter, orbiting with a planet around a Sun-like star. Such an arrangement has never before been seen but might be common, the scientists say, leading to solar systems with distorted planetary orbits.\n\nKevin Luhman of Penn State University is the lead author on a report describing this discovery, which will be published in The Astrophysical Journal. The discovery concerns a class of the coldest brown dwarfs, called T dwarfs.\n\n\nThe detailed research paper on T dwarf - Ref\nhttp://www.science.psu.edu/alert/Luhman9-2006-2.htm
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.
356177
In lay man's terms:\n\nA star: a huge ball of fire, emitting heat and light, mostly composed of gasses and the source of the heat is the nuclear reactions happening isnide it due to the massive pressure in its core. An example is the sun, the temperture of its surface if more than 5000 degress centigrade, while the temperature of its core is several million degrees. A star is 'usualy' much larger than planets(thouthands to millions of times larger) . Some stars have planets orbiting around them (e,g, our sun)\n\nPlanets: Intert masses that do not emit light or radiate heat. Planets revolve around stars and are far much smaller than stars(e.g. earth, mars, saturn, jupiter,etc). Some planets have moons(much smaller planets) revolving around them.Mostly planets are solid masses, but sometimes they are made of gases. The temperature of planets is far cooler than stars.
881773
A shooting star is a meteorite burning up in our atmosphere.A meteorite is a small piece of space dust usually pea size,maybe a little larger or smaller.Comet are a collection of space debris loosely held together by its own gravity;thus the dust trail.Asteroids are space bodys usually of some size(a few hundred feet to several miles wide).Comets can be quit large as well and the tail is caused by the sun melting the comet.
961557
The stars emit particles that reach us.
202909
it varies on how large the beach in question is. larger=more sand
24213
The biggest known star is the Pistol Star.Its size is about 100 times the Sun!It is ten million times brighter than the sun.It is also largest in terms of volume.   Born up to three million years ago, the Pistol Star may have weighed up to 200 times the mass of the Sun before shedding much of its weight in violent eruptions that began about 4,000 to 6,000 years ago.The Pistol Star is invisible to the naked eye because it is hidden 25,000 light-years away behind great dust clouds in the center of our Milky Way Galaxy.It is located in Pistol Nebula in the centre of Milky Way Galaxy.
39095
No. \n\nStar:\nA self-luminous celestial body consisting of a mass of gas held together by its own gravity in which the energy generated by nuclear reactions in the interior is balanced by the outflow of energy to the surface, and the inward-directed gravitational forces are balanced by the outward-directed gas and radiation pressures\n\nPlanet:\nA nonluminous celestial body larger than an asteroid or comet, illuminated by light from a star, such as the sun, around which it revolves.\n\nSo, stars are self-luminous (have their own light) and are stationary. Planets don't produce their own light and revolve around a star.
331809
science_FREAK, you think the furthest star is just 82 million km away????!!!  That wouldn't even take us out of our own solar system!  In fact, our star, the Sun, is 150 million km away!\n\nIf you mean why do some stars "appear" brighter than others, then that is because stars are at different distances from the Earth, and they are different sizes.  IF you had 2 identical stars, but one was twice the distance from the Earth that the other, then the further away one would appear much dimmer in the sky.\n\nBut all stars shine with a slightly different brightness, I doubt that any two are identical.  So the appearance of some stars being brighter than others is down to size of stars and how far away from us that they are.
215254
No. Our sun is just a plain, average G2 V type dwarf. \n\nPulsars are neutronstars that send out strong radiopulses as they rotate. They were first tought to be radio beacons from some alien civilization because of the regularity of the pulse. The first one observed had a period of 1.337011 seconds. Only a neutronstar can rotate that fast. As a massive star explodes in a supernova its core collapses. As it does so it spins faster and faster like a figure skater pulling her arms in. A stellar core goes from earth size to the size of a city. \n\nWhen scientists detected a pulsar within the Crab nebula, where a supernova had obviously gone off, it was confirmed that pulstars are in fact neutronstars.
194430
A Star's Size:\n\nA star begins its "life" in a contracting nebula of gas and dust. As the density of the material increases under the influence of gravity, compression heats the material. If the material gets hot enough, hydrogen atoms begin fusing together to form helium atoms, and a star is born. A star will spend most of its life, called the main sequence phase, fusing hydrogen into helium.\n\n  \nIt's logical that a large nebula (one with a large amount of mass) will form a large star, and a small nebula will form a small star. However, in addition to a star's initial mass, a star's size also depends on the balance between the inward pull of gravity and the outward push of the energy produced by fusion. The entire sequence of a star's evolution can be described in terms of the changing balance between these two opposing forces.
1034372
Lets look at the maths. If every star in this galaxy was a grain of sand ( approx. 100 billion ) you would have enough sand to fill an Olympic size swimming pool. how many habitable planets around each star ? Between 0 and 5 maybe. \n  There are approx 100 billion galaxies. Again if each star was a grain of sand  there would be more sand than on every beach on earth. The chances are there is life elsewhere and in all probability the seeds of life on earth came from somewhere else  as explained by the panspermia hypothesis.\n   And the alien abductions? ,,,we're just studying  8)