"Space Pebble Demise Linked to Heat"
A 45-member research team has found that heat, rather than high-speed collisions, is responsible for the breakdown of pebble-sized particles ejected by comets, leading to the reduction of comet dust in the zodiacal cloud. The team, led by meteor astronomer Dr. Peter Jenniskens, used a NASA-sponsored global network called "CAMS" to monitor the night sky for meteors and determined that thermal stresses are likely to blame for breaking up large meteoroids near Earth and all the way to the orbit of Mercury. This discovery sheds new light on the physical and dynamical evolution of meteoroid streams and has been published in the journal Icarus.