if I had a net with a pole long enough would it be possible to catch a shooting star please??

Answer 1

Yes. so long as the net was big enough. I think the pole would have to be about 60 miles long. Are you sure you could handle it?

Answer 2

They've already done it guys. It's called the Stardust mission. http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html
They sent a probe out to return comet samples. So the problem with "catching a shooting star" is as stated already. It's moving faster than a bullet. If you do manage to catch one, it will likely burn up or explode in the impact to you "net." What they used in Stardust is a special man-made insulation material called aerogel. It's the lightest solid known to man. It's actually like looking at solid smoke. It's able to slow down the particles without disintegrating them.

So I guess if you had a pole long enough and some aerogel as the net, it could work. Not very likely though.

Answer 3

No. Meteors travel very fast, and would punch right through a standard net. If you were to make a net out of several meters of cast iron, you would indeed stop the meteor, but it would explode on impact. It is EXTREMELY hard to catch small meteors without destroying them.

But that's not to say it's impossible! Capturing a small meteor is indeed possible, if you have the right equipment. Get a mass driver about 120 kilometers long, curved slightly to account for the Earth's rotation and with all the air pumped out of it, and point it up into the sky. As your radar and laser rangefinders watch the rock approaching, get the mass driver in front of it and pointed directly towards it. Have your catcher at the front end of the mass driver, and just before the meteor hits, fire it towards the other end. The meteor will enter the mass driver tube and will not burn up as it travels because you've pumped all the air out. Keep the catcher going just slightly slower than the meteor until the meteor catches up to it and hits it at a relative speed of under a meter a second. Then slowly decelerate the catcher, and the meteor on top of it, until they stop. Through this process, you could indeed capture a small meteor intact- however, it would be enormously expensive, and probably not even possible with current technology (unless you wanted to pile up dirt until you had a 120-kilometer-tall mountain to install the mass driver in).

Answer 4

In theory you could, but I've never heard of anyone trying. Other answerers have elicited the reasons. When it hits the atmosphere it's going 100,000 mph. It's usually fragile. So you'd need a net able to absorb all that energy into itself without breaking the net or rock. The other problem is that you don't see it for long. As it decelerates quickly, it stops going fast enough to leave a light trail. You'd have to follow it by active radar rather than visually. So how do you get yourself in a plane at the right spot at the right time with the right equipment. It's possible, but I sure wouldn't invest my life savings into a meteor-catching service.

Answer 5

No but not for any of the reason stated. Shooting stars are many light years from us and by time we see it its been many years,decades or more since event happened. You cant catch it even with A net strong enough and long enough because by time you see it its long gone! Extra note here after seeing other answers before and after mine it seems many are confused metors and falling stars are NOT the same. If you question is in regards to catch a a metor then reword it. If it is indeed a falling star my reply already proves why that cannot be done.

Answer 6

My answer is a practical, mechanical one, before you even think about the properties of asteroids...
If you were to see a lenth of that yellow or blue plastic tubing, by the side of the road, waiting to go into the ground for a gas or water, or telephone pipe, being plastic, you could lift quite a long length by yourself, if you picked it up from the middle. Try and pick up a length at one end, and it will not even lift at the other end. Here the lever principal works against you.
And thats only a few metres long. You'd need miles of it,(as an example, even using a thin theoretical stick would be the same, at greater distance) and even starting verticle, the slightest breeze, especialy as wind is greatly magnified at altitude, you could not control the sway, so the mechanics isnt possible.
Then there's the weight, a fishing net is bamboo, or lets be generous and say carbon fibre rod. Thats going to be about 50 grammes, per metre length. Now, the average asteroid is between 80 and 120 Kilometres above earth. Lets take just 80.
One Kilometer is 1000 metres, so thats 80,000 metres, minimum, at 50gram per metre, Thats 4,000 kilo's, and the most you can bench press, reasonably is 200 kilo, max, to make you go purple! so you could no way hold the rod off the ground! Working it back, you'd need a rod, a gram per meter (80kilo) to attempt to lift it using shoulder muscles in the way you imagine. Nothing at one gram per metre, wouldnt just simply bend back to the ground!
So physically impossible, in mechanics, let alone the speeds and temperatures of asteroids!

Answer 7

Not unless your pole could travel back in time as well as most stars in the sky are not actually there. The light takes so long to reach Earth that the stars we see are actually millions of years old and are probably dead right now.

Answer 8

Yes, but you wouldn't need a long pole, just something that won't burn as the meteor will be extremely hot after travelling through the atmosphere.

Answer 9

A shooting star is really a small meterorite or space debris. What you see is that item burning up in the atmosphere, so you could plausibly catch it, but it would burn a hole in your net. Most do eventually hit the ground, but usually by the time they do they are so small they make no noticable hole.

Answer 10

A shooting star is a metorite - that is, a little rock that is coming into the earth's atmosphere and burning up.

They come in at a speed MUCH faster than the speed of a bullet, so it would be like catching a bullet. Ummm... that wouldnt work.