Liputan6.com, California – As a child, a child usually imagines a falling star or a meteor as something beautiful and amazing.
But in fact, the sky show is dangerous and also reminds us that, Earth is not the only cosmic thing in the universe. Like one of them that can happen, the Perseid meteor shower.
Perseid meteor shower, which occurs every year in mid-August, occurs when the Earth revolves through the traces left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle.
As quoted from Livescience.com, on Thursday (4/8/2016), in 1973 an astronomer, Brian Marsden at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, predicted that Swift-Tuttle would collide with Earth in 2126.
The prediction is predicted by Brian based on the results of a limited observation calculation on the orbit of an object.
The prediction of the apocalypse is then withdrawn. However, what would happen if the meteor actually hit the Earth?
"We have to make sure that it will not happen," said Donald Yoemans, senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
When Swift-Tuttle was spotted in 1992, Yoemans was one of several scientists who produced a revision model of comet movement.
They make more complicated calculations to take into account the effects of the gravity of the sun and planets in the orbits of space rocks.
The apparition – along with data from 1562 and 1737 – provided enough information for astronomers to predict collisions in 2126.
"However, the Swift-Tuttle comet is not an ordinary space rock, it is one of the largest objects that pass through Earth," Donald said.The cosmic object can travel as far as 26 kilometers. As it approaches Earth orbit – almost every 136 years – the comet races at 36 miles per second or more than 150 times the speed of sound.