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<blockquote data-quote="RandyDSok" data-source="post: 175748" data-attributes="member: 201">Actually, they usually say the peak is around Aug 11th-13th... but that is a generalization as it is for any of the meteor showers. First, lets make this a discussion about all of the showers and not just that one. We only know in general terms the density, distribution and size of the particles that make up any of the meteor showers, but not the exact details. That is why some years they are not very spectacular and other years they are &quot;big shows&quot; but we don't know which type it will be until it is happening. So we only know how dense etc the area of a particular stream is after we've gone through it but each year we go through a different portion of the stream since it's always moving and not a static object or objects. In addition, the particles that make up the stream aren't evenly distributed, their density and sizes vary. They do have ideas about those details, but they are only educated guesses which are only based on the past years showers that we've seen. Next you also have to take into consideration the forces like gravity and the solar wind that will also move those particles around and how much they move depends on those things like size, density etc that we don't have exact information about. Now factor in our technology itself... how much if any of it can detect dust sized particles... or pebble size... small rocks... It takes a pretty large bolder to mountain sized object for our technology to detect it from Earth, we can't detect these much smaller objects that make up most of these showers. All we have to go on, is the past data we've collected.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="RandyDSok, post: 175748, member: 201"] Actually, they usually say the peak is around Aug 11th-13th... but that is a generalization as it is for any of the meteor showers. First, lets make this a discussion about all of the showers and not just that one. We only know in general terms the density, distribution and size of the particles that make up any of the meteor showers, but not the exact details. That is why some years they are not very spectacular and other years they are "big shows" but we don't know which type it will be until it is happening. So we only know how dense etc the area of a particular stream is after we've gone through it but each year we go through a different portion of the stream since it's always moving and not a static object or objects. In addition, the particles that make up the stream aren't evenly distributed, their density and sizes vary. They do have ideas about those details, but they are only educated guesses which are only based on the past years showers that we've seen. Next you also have to take into consideration the forces like gravity and the solar wind that will also move those particles around and how much they move depends on those things like size, density etc that we don't have exact information about. Now factor in our technology itself... how much if any of it can detect dust sized particles... or pebble size... small rocks... It takes a pretty large bolder to mountain sized object for our technology to detect it from Earth, we can't detect these much smaller objects that make up most of these showers. All we have to go on, is the past data we've collected. [/QUOTE]

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