What are bolides?
The word bolide is coined from a Greek word for missile, and when a blazing bolide crashes down from the sky, you might well think that the earth is bcanbarded by missiles from mars. But before you have time to feel scared, chances are you will realize that the razzle dazzle event is just a falling fireball. Bolides are related to fireballs, to so called shooting stars and falling stars. Meteors are space traveling lumps of minerals voyaging for countless ages through the solar system. Their space ways are enormous. But every hour thousands of speck sized meteors collide with the earth. Traveling through empty space at perhaps speeds of 25 miles a second, a meteor suddenly crashes into the resisting air of the earth. It must ,jam on its brakes and slow down, and its speed energy is turned instantly into heat energy. The space traveler catches fire, and the speck sized meteors burn to ashes before they reach the ground. A meteor of 10 pounds or more, however, is likely to survive the fa
