meteoroid
any of the small bodies, often remnants of comets, traveling through space: when such a body enters the earth's atmosphere it is heated to luminosity and becomes a meteor.
Origin of meteoroid
1Words that may be confused with meteoroid
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Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use meteoroid in a sentence
As they hurtle towards Earth, air forces itself inside the meteoroid, increasing the pressure and causing it to explode from the inside out.
The Perseid meteor shower is about to begin—here’s how to catch it | empire | July 13, 2021 | Popular-ScienceLarger meteoroids, like the roughly 55-foot diameter Chelyabinsk meteor that exploded over Russia in 2013, go through a similar yet even more destructive process.
The Perseid meteor shower is about to begin—here’s how to catch it | empire | July 13, 2021 | Popular-ScienceHalf a century earlier, Whipple himself had determined the orbit of the meteoroids by photographing the paths of the meteors against the sky.
December’s stunning Geminid meteor shower is born from a humble asteroid | Ken Croswell | December 2, 2020 | Science NewsThis suggests that some catastrophe hit the asteroid in the recent past and made so many meteoroids that they continue to delight meteor observers today.
December’s stunning Geminid meteor shower is born from a humble asteroid | Ken Croswell | December 2, 2020 | Science NewsSo that was actually good news then, but other kinds of leaks are mostly thought to be caused by micro meteoroids.
Podcast: How democracies can reclaim digital power | Anthony Green | October 15, 2020 | MIT Technology Review
British Dictionary definitions for meteoroid
/ (ˈmiːtɪəˌrɔɪd) /
any of the small celestial bodies that are thought to orbit the sun, possibly as the remains of comets. When they enter the earth's atmosphere, they become visible as meteors
Derived forms of meteoroid
- meteoroidal, adjective
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Scientific definitions for meteoroid
[ mē′tē-ə-roid′ ]
A small, rocky or metallic body revolving in interplanetary space around the Sun. A meteoroid is significantly smaller than an asteroid, ranging from small grains or particles to the size of large boulders. The clustered meteoroids associated with regular annual meteor showers are believed to be very small particles of cometary debris. Meteoroids that survive their passage through the Earth's atmosphere and land as meteorites are somewhat larger, solitary bodies and are encountered in no predictable pattern. See Note at meteor.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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