Watch Tonight: Orionid Meteor Shower Lights Up the Sky - Tonight, witness the Orionid meteor shower as it streaks across the dark, moonless sky, with up to 20 meteors an hour peaking between October 21 and 23, born from Halley’s Comet, offering a glimpse into Earth's cosmic past. | The Brain Maze

When a meteor enters Earth’s atmosphere, it’s moving at incredible speeds—often tens of thousands of miles per hour. This rapid motion compresses the air in front of it, generating intense heat that can reach several thousand degrees. That heat causes the meteor to glow brilliantly, producing the bright streak we recognize as a “shooting star.” As it blazes through the sky, the meteor begins to lose its outer layers in a process called ablation, where the intense heat causes the material to vapo