By LUCAS LAURSEN [Nature] –The Perseid shower still manages to surprise scientists despite its annual appearance. “Five to ten years ago, the main idea about these particles is that they were homogeneous,” recalls Pavel Spurný of the Ondřejov Observatory in the Czech Republic. To investigate that theory, he and his team compared the observed paths of meteoroids through the atmosphere with the light curves predicted by a physical model of homogeneous particles, and found that they didn’t match. “We proved that meteoroids are composed of two main parts — a grain and glue,” explains Spurný. This year, the team hopes to get data that will help them refine their models.
Continued at Nature | More Chronicle & Notices.
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