# Can we make our own meteor shower? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 18, 2001, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-make-our-own-meteor-shower/94096 "2001-11-18T21:24:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2001, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-make-our-own-meteor-shower/94096/1 "2001-11-18T21:24:49Z")
They say that a meteor is about the size of a grain of rice. Could we just send a satelite into orbit with a bag of rice and toss it at the earth to make an even more dazzeling display? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2001, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-make-our-own-meteor-shower/94096/2 "2001-11-18T22:00:18Z")
I’m not sure that tossing at the earth would necessarily have the desired effect of causing it to drop out of orbit, it might be better to decelerate it somehow and allow it to fall into the atmosphere. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2001, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-make-our-own-meteor-shower/94096/3 "2001-11-18T22:11:16Z")
That should read “Tossing **it** at the earth” :o ---
**Author:** ![saepiroth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5ac83/32.png) [@saepiroth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saepiroth)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2001, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-make-our-own-meteor-shower/94096/4 "2001-11-18T23:20:41Z")
well, how’s about a sack of rice and a bottle of liquid nitrogen? the nitrogen could be sent to outgas and blow the rice out the opposite direction of the sattelite’s orbit. if necessary, there could be a little heater to vaporize the nitrogen faster. ---
**Author:** ![geepee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ebca7d/32.png) [@geepee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/geepee)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2001, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-make-our-own-meteor-shower/94096/5 "2001-11-18T23:22:12Z")
Rather expensive to send stuff into space just for you amusement (watch some cola company do it in the near future eh?) .But if they were to do it they’d better get it right since the 60s humans have left an awful large amount of junk in space and this stuff travels damned fast fast enough to crater space shuttle windows. So they would have to get it right very right on a reentry orbit so it doesn’t bounce off and become more space debris (making it more dangerous to go into space and possibly trapping us on the earth). But since we can’t even get cluster bombs to work right I don’t think it would be a good idea. ---
**Author:** ![saepiroth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5ac83/32.png) [@saepiroth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saepiroth)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2001, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-make-our-own-meteor-shower/94096/6 "2001-11-18T23:34:37Z")
wasn’t that one method of terrorism some people were worried about? some rogue nation launching a rocket filled with 1 MM diameter aluminium beads and a shaped charge to spread it out? ---
**Author:** ![geepee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ebca7d/32.png) [@geepee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/geepee)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2001, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-make-our-own-meteor-shower/94096/7 "2001-11-19T00:59:25Z")
Actually its a VERY bad idea to make your own meteor showers as well as the reasons above theres some other points,If you ate your favourite food everyday it would become mundane and ordinary . Just like bizzare fruits and foods from far away places when i was a kid exotic things would show up on shop shelves and be ££££££ . But all these exotic things are now just mundane normal everyday things now , artificial meteor showers would just make it boring eventually and people would stay in and watch the TV . But if it was a natural event that rarely happens say Halley’s comet then theres a reason to see it , ie your never going to see it again in your life since it takes i think 88 years to come back to us. ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2001, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-make-our-own-meteor-shower/94096/8 "2001-11-19T01:04:35Z")
I don’t think rice grains have enough weight to generate the required friction against the atmosphere and subsequently burn up in an attractive manner. Try bolling balls. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2001, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-make-our-own-meteor-shower/94096/9 "2001-11-19T01:14:00Z")
I think the pyrotechnic effects of a meteor strike is due to the high velocity of the small particles with respect to the Earth. The energy you’d get from just dropping something like a grain of sand from orbit probably wouldn’t be as impressive. ---
**Author:** ![Drake\_Christensen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/96bed5/32.png) [@Drake\_Christensen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drake_Christensen)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2001, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-make-our-own-meteor-shower/94096/10 "2001-11-19T02:40:56Z")
When deorbiting from low-Earth orbit the rice/pebbles/whatever would be traveling about 17,500 mph. Plenty fast enough for entertaining pyrotechnics, methinks. ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2001, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-make-our-own-meteor-shower/94096/11 "2001-11-19T02:42:21Z")
Or even _bowling_ balls. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2001, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-make-our-own-meteor-shower/94096/12 "2001-11-19T02:56:23Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Drake Christensen \* > \*\*When deorbiting from low-Earth orbit the rice/pebbles/whatever would be traveling about 17,500 mph. Plenty fast enough for entertaining pyrotechnics, methinks. \*\* Yes, but the Leonid meteor shower, for example, is 70 km/sec. That’s about 10 times the speed of a Shuttle re-entering the atmosphere. Which means 100 times the energy. Of course, if you used particles that are 100 times larger you’d get the same energy, but it may look noticeably slower and different than natural meteors. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Bad\_Astronomer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f05b48/32.png) [@The\_Bad\_Astronomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Bad_Astronomer)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2001, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-make-our-own-meteor-shower/94096/13 "2001-11-19T03:20:51Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Drake Christensen \* > \*\*When deorbiting from low-Earth orbit the rice/pebbles/whatever would be traveling about 17,500 mph. Plenty fast enough for entertaining pyrotechnics, methinks. \*\* I watched a Russian rocket re-enter the atmosphere back in 1990 or so. _Very_ impressive fireworks. It moved obviously slower than a meteor, and had bits of fire dripping off as it fell. Amazing. ---
**Author:** ![Truth\_Seeker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5fc32e/32.png) [@Truth\_Seeker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Truth_Seeker)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2001, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-make-our-own-meteor-shower/94096/14 "2001-11-19T03:37:22Z")
I think it’s even more complicated than that. Even if the speed’s the same, the direction of the velocity vector is different. If you toss a handful of sand at the earth from the space station it’ll eventually enter the atmosphere and burn up. However, the sand would still be in a decaying orbit around the earth so it’d be braked by the atmosphere more slowly, would heat up more slowly and wouldn’t be as spectacular. In fact, it’s possible it wouldn’t completely burn up at all, depending on how fast the orbit decayed. The Leonids, however, are coming at Earth head-on. (More correctly, Earth is heading at the Leonids head-on.) That means they’re heading more-or-less straight into the atmosphere and that they burn up in the minimum amount of time with the most spectacular possible effect.