why do meteors come back?

Question

So there is an article here
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/10/09/science/comet-tsuchinshan-atlas-earth

It speaks about a meteor that will be here in October and not return for 80000 years. I’m just wondering, why do meteors come back?

I assume it takes a lot of force to change the trajectory of a meteor, so wouldn’t it move in the same general direction forever and never come back?

In: Planetary Science

Answer 1

Basically everything you can see in space with a normal telescope or your naked eye falls into 2 categories:

1. Distant stars
2. Things in an orbit in our solar system

A meteor is something that has hit the Earth. A meteor shower is caused by a collection of things that are orbiting together coming in contact with Earth at the same time.

So what is happening here is there’s some cloud of dust or debris that is in orbit in the solar system. When it crosses paths with Earth, some of it hits Earth and creates a meteor shower.

Then both Earth and the cloud continue on their orbits until the next time they cross paths (in this case, 80,000 years from now).