Resources

Every year, thousands of cosmic bodies bombard the Earth's atmosphere, with a few hundred surviving the journey to impact land or sea. Meteorites the size of a basketball strike Earth about once a month, with nearly 75 percent landing in water. Larger asteroids with potential for major global environment changes hit once every 100,000 years on average, with similar-sized comets impacting approximately every 500,000 years.

Perhaps the most spectacular astronomical events that one can observe without a telescope, lunar and solar eclipses were considered omens of great fortune or complete disaster in ancient times. We now know that the occurrence of eclipses is a consequence of the orbits of the Earth and Moon with respect to the Sun.

Shooting Stars is a lesson plan that teaches you the Kepler's laws of planetary motion in a concrete and innovative way. You will play a physics puzzle game where you get to control the planets of a star system. By playing the game you can simulate orbiting planets and gravitational forces in the searing heat of the sun. You can try how many planets you can keep in orbit. Test your skills in many ways, with different scenarios that give you a taste of the world of supercomputer simulation PRACE offers!