Word: meteorically
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...odds of a skydiver hitting an airplane areabout the same as a meteor hitting your car,"Strickland said. "We do 10,000 jumps a year...andwe've never had anybody come close to one of thejumpers in freefall before...
...some time scientists have been moving toward the view that the extinction of the dinosaurs occurred after a giant comet or meteor struck the earth, filling the air with dust that shut out the sunlight for months. Now the theory is looking even better: a crater off the coast of Yucatan, known to be the right age (65 million years old) but thought to be too small to have been made by such a cosmic collision, has been discovered to be 185 miles across, not 110 as previously believed. The heavenly object that carved it out was plenty big enough...
After the first hour they spent atop Arizona's Kitt Peak scanning the post- midnight skies, the observers knew that their ascent to an altitude of more than 6,000 ft. had not been in vain. They had counted 33 shooting stars, the advance guard of the annual Leonid meteor shower. But none of the University of Arizona students could anticipate the spectacle that was still to come. In the small hours of that Nov. 17 morning in 1966, the fiery meteors began streaking overhead in ever increasing numbers until, as one viewer reported in Sky & Telescope magazine...
While more modest meteor showers, usually consisting of no more than a scattering of shooting stars, take place as often as 15 to 20 times each year over various parts of the globe, dramatic displays like the 1966 Leonids occur rarely, only a few times each century. But the next great meteor storm of the 20th century could occur this week -- if astronomers' hunches are right. Conditions seem ideal, they say, for the annual Perseid meteor shower to develop into a vivid display that should be visible in many parts of the northern hemisphere on the night...
...These meteors are known as Perseids because they appear to emanate from the constellation Perseus, just as the Leonids, cast-off material from another comet, appear to radiate from a point in Leo. While most of the cometary debris consists of small particles, each tiny piece traveling at such high speed packs a mighty wallop capable of inflicting severe damage on anything it encounters. Consequently, satellites orbiting above the protective atmosphere during a heavy meteor shower are vulnerable. With this danger in mind, NASA prudently postponed last week's scheduled launch of the shuttle Discovery, which otherwise would have been...