The Stories Behind the August Perseids

It's August, so for better or worse, two stories will be making the rounds in the blogosphere. First, is the Mars Hoax email that will not die. I've written about this before, so we won't go there again. Second, is the Perseid meteor shower, which occurs every August.The Perseids are my favorite meteor shower because the late summer weather is a lot easier to tolerate than some of the cold winter nights other annual showers happen to occur, like the Leonids in November and the Geminids in December.Every August that the Moon promises not to interfere, we are reminded that this will be the best meteor shower of the year. But there is more to the Perseids than meets the eye and there are some interesting stories behind the Perseids that don't generally get told. I'd like to share some of them with you here.Let's start with where do meteor showers come from?We know today that there are streams of particles, called meteoroids, in orbit around the Sun. When the Earth encounters one of these streams, these mostly dust sized particles are trapped by Earth's gravity and burn up as they descend through the atmosphere. The result of this flame-out ...