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Show Meteors Small Particles of Either Stone or Iron Meteors are known to be Email particles of matter composed either of stone or iron or both. About 30 oilier minerals uu.ve ucen iucuu,,t in some of them, says a writer in the Kansas City Times. Even microscopic mi-croscopic diamonds have been found in a few meteorites that have struck the earth. The meteors we see are too small to be observed in space and are therefore not visible until they encounter the earth's atmosphere, at-mosphere, when, because of the tremendous tre-mendous speed at which they travel, friction causes them to burn brightly. bright-ly. It is-the light from their burning burn-ing that we see. They are usually consumed in less than a second of time, and are often followed by a stream of "smoke" which lingers for several seconds after the meteor me-teor itself has been spent. Ordinarily Ordi-narily they appear about around 75 miles above the earth and disappear dis-appear nt about 50. Usually, those meteors appearing In the evening hours (overtaking the earth) are estimated to travel at a speed of 7 to 14 miles a second, sec-ond, while those appearing about dawn (and meeting the earth head-on) head-on) are rated at a spued of 4-1 to 51 miles a second. Thus the evening meteors are usually more brilliant and come nearer to the earth, while those of the morning are more numerous nu-merous nnd their enormous speed hums them up at a much greater height. It happens sometimes that largo meteors are not consumed in flight, and therefore strike the earth. These are called meteorites nnd are divided into three nu.iu classes', Bone, stony-iron and iron. |