Bolides in the earth atmosphere

Abstract

The incremental influx of cosmic material on the Earth shows few maxima in the dependence on the size of falling meteoroids (citeauthorch04:ceplecha1992 citeyearch04:ceplecha1992). The largest one corresponds to the impact of asteroid-sized bodies--about 3 km in size and mass of about 1014 kg. The second maximum reaches almost the same value and corresponds to the bodies with masses of 104-106kg (i.e., with diameters about 1-10 m). The information about these meteoroids is scarce. These bodies create the appearance of very bright meteors in the Earth's atmosphere (bolides and superbolides). Sizes of these bodies are one to two orders of magnitude smaller than the sizes of meteoroids, which create asteroid hazards. It is possible to observe bolides and superbolides on a regular basis © 2008 springer.