How fast would I need to run to keep up with a shooting star?
Impossibly fast! The slowest shooting stars travel about 11 kilometres every second, which is over a thousand times faster than the fastest human runner.
Let's imagine a race between you and a shooting star.
The fastest humans can sprint at about 10 metres per second, covering 100 metres in under 10 seconds. A fast child might run 5 metres per second.
The slowest shooting stars travel at about 11 kilometres per second. That is 11,000 metres every second! Some, like those in the Leonid meteor shower, zoom along at about 71 kilometres per second.
So even the slowest shooting star is more than a thousand times faster than the fastest human sprinter. If you ran a 100-metre race against a shooting star, it would cross the finish line in about a hundredth of a second, before you had taken a single step.
Here are some more comparisons:
- A car on a motorway goes about 30 metres per second. - A passenger jet flies at about 250 metres per second. - A bullet from a rifle travels about 1,000 metres per second. - The International Space Station orbits Earth at about 7,700 metres per second.
Shooting stars beat them all! At 20 kilometres per second, a shooting star could travel from London to Edinburgh in under 30 seconds. That incredible speed is why it heats the air so much that it glows.