Meteor Showers

There was an explosion over Buffalo, apparently caused by a meteorite. I find the fact that there are scheduled meteor showers reveals a lot about the history of the sun and Solar System.

There are many separate meteor showers that occur at the same time each year. These meteor showers, as well as comets, are actually remnants of the Solar System before the sun or the planets existed. But the large star that preceded the sun existed and had undergone at least one nova, which came before the supernova that created the present Solar System.

There are regular meteor showers throughout the year. As the earth moves through it's orbit around the sun it passes through clouds of dust. Particles burning up by friction with the atmosphere is what produces the "shooting stars".

The dust was mostly left behind by comets. These comets are composed mostly of ice and collect dust in space as they move along in their orbits around the sun. The orbits of comets around the sun tend to be extremely eccentric, coming from far out in space and spending only a brief time near the sun before going far back out into space for long periods of time. There are comets with orbital periods of thousands of years.

When the comet gets close to the sun the outermost ice gets vaporized by the heat. This is what produces the visible "tail" of the comet, as the vapor reflects sunlight. It also leaves a trail of dust in space in the part of the comet's orbit that was close to the sun. It is this trail of dust that the earth passes through every year to create the predictable shower of "shooting stars".

The comets have orbits around the sun in geometric planes that are not the same at all as the earth's. This is why different meteor showers that occur every year seem to come at us from different directions in the sky. Each meteor shower has it's own direction.

Meteor showers, which occur on the same date every year as the earth passes through the cloud of dust during it's orbit around the sun, are thus named for the constellations in the sky that they seem to radiate from. Some of the meteor showers are the Perseids, Geminids, and, Leonids.

The first thing that is obvious is that the particles of dust cannot be in orbit around the sun. For the particles to enter the earth's atmosphere would mean that the particles are the same distance from the sun as earth. This would then mean that the earth and the particles would never run into each other since everything in the Solar System orbits the sun in the same direction, and objects at the same distance from the sun will orbit at the same rate. In a similar way Jupiter has two groups of asteroids that share it's orbit at Lagrangian Points L4 and L5, known as the Greeks and the Trojans, but which never meet Jupiter.

Neither is it possible that the particles of dust that are shed by the comet when it is near the sun continue with the momentum of the comet in the orbit of the comet. Comets have very eccentric orbits with long orbital periods. A comet comes close to the sun, where it's outer layers are vaporized into the familiar "tail" and it sheds the dust that it has collected in it's journey through space, for only a relatively brief time during it's long orbit. If the particles of dust continued with the momentum in the orbit of the comet they would be there for the earth to pass through them for one, or just maybe two, years. But the earth has been passing through the same cometary clouds of dust that have been producing the same predictable meteor showers that have been recorded for hundreds, or even thousands, of years.

The only possible conclusion is that the clouds of dust that the earth passes through during it's orbit around the sun are stationary in space and do not orbit the sun. I don't see how it could be any other way.

This requires some special explanation. These dust particles are made of matter, which has mass, and gravity acts on mass. So why aren't these clouds of dust that the earth passes through in it's orbit in orbit themselves around the sun? The vast clouds of dust and gas in our galaxy orbit the center of the galaxy along with all of the stars.

We know that the sun was preceded by a large star that exploded in a supernova. Some of the debris fell back together by it's mutual gravity to form the sun and planets. My theory is that at least one, but probably three, nova preceded the supernova. As stellar fusion proceeds to successively heavier atoms more energy is released per time and this upsets the equilibrium of the star. A nova is the blasting away of the outer layers of the star, in an effort to regain equilibrium. If that doesn't restore equilibrium then the star will explode from the center as a supernova. 

We also know that the tremendous energy released by a supernova fuses together elements heavier than iron, which would not otherwise exist because the ordinary fusion process only goes as far as iron. This is why iron and lighter elements are exponentially more common than heavier elements, like silver, gold and, uranium. The much-lesser energy released by a nova fuses molecules together from the light atoms in the outer layers of the star. These light molecules include water, ammonia and, methane. Comets are composed mostly from these light molecules and the water on earth almost certainly came from comet impacts.

The comets were in orbit around the previous star before it exploded in the supernova. Some of the matter from the explosion collected back together by gravity to form the sun and the planets. But the sun was much less massive than the previous star had been. This means that the comets had much less orbital energy than before but the information of their orbits around the previous star could not just be lost. So the orbits of the comets around the sun "shrank" but with the high point, aphelion, remaining as it was before. This is why the orbits of comets are so elliptical. 

In the first of the following diagrams the previous star is shown in red and the typical orbit of a comet around it in green. The second diagram is after the supernova and the falling back of a portion of the matter to form the sun and Solar System. But the sun, shown in black, has only a fraction of the mass of the previous star so the orbit of the comet, shown in blue, has to "shrink" to match the decreased orbital energy. These diagrams are not to scale.

The question is why the particles of dust don't orbit the sun so that the earth passes through them in it's orbit every year. The answer is that their orbits would necessarily contain orbital energy. The planets orbit the sun because they formed in the same way as the sun, from the supernova debris, but the comets existed, and were in orbit around the previous star, before the sun formed. For the particles of dust to begin orbits around the sun would thus mean creating energy out of nothing, and we know that this cannot be done.

The dust is not entirely stationary. It is stationary with regard to the sun but the sun itself is in orbit around the center of the galaxy, bringing the Solar System with it. The comets orbit the sun because they were in orbit around the previous star before it exploded.

So the reason there are meteor showers that repeat every year is that energy cannot be created out of nothing.