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Originally Posted by antoniseb
That should be from 6.7 miles/second to 47.0 miles/second.
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What's a mile?
Translating into units I understand, your range runs from 10.78 km/sec to 75.6 km/sec. I guess those are close enough to my source to be acceptable. My source (
Meteors and Meteorites: Origins and Observations by Martin Beech) gives a range of 11.2 - 72.8 km/s.
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This takes into account:
- energy gained falling into the Earth's gravity
- speed of the Earth's orbit compared to that of the rock's orbit
- the fact that some comets orbit backwards.
- the fact that some meteoroids come from near Earth sources.
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Beech's explanation of the velocity range is as follows:
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The lower limit is related to the Earth's escape velocity, and is the velocity an object would acquire if it simply fell from deep space towards the Earth under the Earth's gravitational attraction alone. The upper limit corresponds to a head-on collision between the Earth at perihelion, where its orbital velocity is [at its maximum value of] 30.3 km/s, and a meteoroid having the solar system's escape velocity of 42.5 km/s at 0.98AU (the Earth's perhelion distance) from the Sun.
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Your explanation is close enough to that, I think! Take it away, antoniseb.