If you are anything like me, you probably like watching for shooting stars in the night sky. A shooting star, or a meteor, is usually a small rock that falls into Earth’s atmosphere.

Michael Allen.
Allen

When I went to visit my friend Michael Allen, a senior instructor of astronomy and physics at Washington State University, he told me a lot of shooting stars are no bigger than a pencil eraser.

“The earth is going to pass a random pebble once in a while and that will make a streak in the sky,” he said.

When a small rock is falling into Earth’s atmosphere, it falls super-fast. Depending on the meteor, it can travel anywhere from 36,000 feet to 236,220 feet in a single second. As it falls, there is a lot of friction between the air and the rock. With all that friction, the rock starts to get really hot.

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