[meteorite-list] www.venusmeteorite.com - What is a meteoroid?
Randall Gregory
randall_gregory at yahoo.com
Fri Feb 16 13:08:53 EST 2007
MeteoriteKid,
You wrote:
"With 'meteoroids,' however, (the definition of which tends to mean dust-sized,"
That implied my using the term meteoroid was incorrect, however that was not what I found searching for the actual definition.
Wikipedia:
The current International Astronomical Union (IAU) definition dates back to the XIth General Assembly, held in 1961:
"A solid object moving in interplanetary space, of a size considerably smaller than an asteroid and considerably larger than an atom or molecule." As a result of the inexorable progress of instrumentation, this definition is now deemed by many as unacceptably vague. The most common definition was proposed in 1995 [1] and sets the size limits of meteoroids to between 100 µm and 10 m across. Larger than that, the object is an asteroid; smaller than that, it is interplanetary dust.
#2 NASA website "How do you get so much energy out of a 3-inch meteoroid? "Leonids travel fastabout 144,000 mph," he explains. "At that speed, even a 3-inch rock packs tremendous energy."
I believe I was correct in using the term "meteoroid".
Randall
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