If small meteorites hit the earth all the time, how come they never hit airplanes?

Question

If small meteorites hit the earth all the time, how come they never hit airplanes?

Answer 1

metors hit the earth all the time so why don't they hit houses?

about 70% of all meteors hit water b/c about 70% of the surface of the earth is water.



same thing with ariplanes. airplane takes up small amoumt of space compared to the free and empty space around it.

Answer 2

True, a very large number of meteoroids enter the Earth's atmosphere each day. They amount to more than a hundred tons of material but they are mostly very small, just a few milligrams each. Because they enter the atmosphere at very high speeds they vaporize by air friction. Seldom does a larger object will survive its fall to Earth as a meteorite. However, the sudden appearance and fast motion of a bright meteor produces an illusion of closeness that have caused airline pilots to swerve to avoid meteors that were actually 100 miles away. (That is as close as we are probably gonna get with this one.)



Meteoroids are the smallest particles orbiting the sun, and since most are no larger than grains of sand the odds of hitting an aircraft with such a small particle in a very, very vast atmosphere would be slight. That is the reason they "don't hit airplanes". Consider the amount of material that most meteorites burn down to after entering the atmosphere (milligrams too small to be visible) could very well strike an airplane and no one would ever know. A few miligrams of material against a big jet? You'd be hard pressed to find the evidence.



Perhaps you are thinking of Asteroids? Asteroids, or minor planets, have been described as "mountains in space." They are large rocks typically ranging from a few feet to several hundred miles across. Why don't asteroids hit airplanes? Because most asteroids never come closer than 100 million miles from Earth.

Answer 3

There are many more houses than airplanes on the surface of the earth. Why don't we hear more about meteorites hitting houses? Or automobiles... Or people?



I think the answer is that there just aren't that many meteorites landing here that are big enough to be noticed.

Answer 4

once i was camping and all night i heard these loud bangs hitting my van. In the morning i picked up several metiors. i knew that they were the cause of the niose. So i would guess that airplanse have small indentions on them as well as other viehicles that are older from these small impacts. People have doubted my story however calling me a lier. but i swear this is true.

Answer 5

They do but, at least one did once, scared me so bad when it hit the wing I thought someone shot at me. Like I said it scared me so bad that I didn't tell anyone at first but that was a long time ago and maybe people are like me afraid to tell someone their plane got hit by an unidentified flying object.

Answer 6

because there is much more surface area to hit on the planet than there is on aircraft.