Summary: In this episode with guest Dr. Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute, we explore those things that go "flash" in the night sky -- and often are romantically called "shooting stars". In reality, of course, they're not stars but "meteors". Now, meteors are not part of our weather, as people used to think, but are usually caused by pieces of rock that arrive from space at incredibly high speeds and collide violently with the air. These meteoroids can be as small as a grain of sand all the way up to a good-sized boulder and often come from streams of dust particles created by comets as they travel around the Sun. We'll also discuss other forms of cosmic debris, such as asteroids.
