Meteor (flying rock) gets broken apart by air?
In: Physics
Imagine you are jumping in the pool, it doesnt hurt you, right?
Now imagine you are jumping in a pool from a 5meter/15feet tall spring/diving board and land on your belly.
Thats gotta hurt a lot.
Due to your higher speed the impact on the water is much more critical. What you feel is the density difference between gaseous air and liquid water.
For meteors its the same with earth.
They are flying extremly fast through the emptiness of space. There is nothing that could slow them down.
And then they hit the gaseous atmostphere of earth, which has a much higher density that space. You suddenly hit molekuls and material. And you do that at such a high speed that the atmosphere creates very high friction on the meteors and it will burn.
You would also burn if you would run with 15-20,000 km/h through the atmosphere.
So dont do that
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