Why are there annual meteor showers like the Leonids and Perseids?

Question

I understand that meteor showers are due to the Earth passing through the debris left by a comet, but shouldn’t the Earth clear out any lingering meteors after a few revolutions?

In: Planetary Science

Answer 1

Edit: reworded better.

That cloud of meteors is huge, comprised of tiny particles, and regularly gets refilled.

The comet orbits the Sun, just on a very stretched orbit that takes centuries. Each time it flies by the Sun, it sheds more dust for the Perseids.

Earth is a relatively tiny target on a stellar scale (look up “earth and moon distance to scale” to get just how much void there is around us). Each year thousands of comet dust specks burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere, but they are millions upon millions more that miss our planet to hit it another year.

And when the comet returns in 200 years, there will be even more.