If meteors burn up in the Earth's atmosphere, where do they keep coming from?

From many sources. Interplanetary space is filthy with rubble left over from the formation of our solar system, even 4.5 billion years later. Asteroids collide with each other and spew fragments into space. Objects collide with the Moon, Mars and Mercury and can launch material into space. What is intercepted by the Earth is only a small fraction of what is still available in comets, asteroids and micrometeoroids.


Copyright 1997 Dr. Sten Odenwald
Return to Ask the Astronomer.