What stop meteors from hitting the Earth's Surface?

Answer 1

They are hitting air molecules at a high speed and breaking them apart, which produces a lot of heat.

Answer 2

They do, all the time. They just usually disintegrate from the impact/friction with the atmosphere before they get to the ground. Some have hit and left craters several miles wide, one believed to be what caused a mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs.

Answer 3

Actually they do. But really large meteors are much less common than smaller ones.

Comments:

1) A "meteor" is, by definition, the steak of light you see in the sky caused by a "meteoroid".

A "meteorite" is the thing that reaches the ground.

Large meteorites are indeed rare.

2) Besides meteorites, large objects that hit the Earth may be asteroids or perhaps comets.

3) Large impacts happen rarely, but they do seem to have happened during the long history of planet Earth.

The extinction of the dinosaurs was probably caused (at least in part) by a large asteroid impact.

Answer 4

When meteors enter the Earth's atmosphere, they encounter resistance and friction, causing them to burn up and disintegrate before reaching the surface. The Earth's atmosphere acts as a protective shield, breaking down most meteoroids into smaller fragments called meteorites. Additionally, the gravitational pull of the Earth may cause some smaller meteoroids to veer off course and burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere.

Answer 5

For us on Earth, it appears really big. But on the cosmic scale, we are a small dot in space. So the chances of a random meteoroid hitting us is very small.

Answer 6

Most meteors are so small that they are completely vaporized during their passage through the atmosphere.

Answer 7

Smaller meteorites will burn up in the atmosphere.

Answer 8

The Earth's atmosphere.