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Space Science

Pennsylvania Meteor Report 82

Posted by michael from the area-51 dept.
squiggy writes: "Turns out the scorched corn field in Pennsylvania, and the reports of car sized space rocks hitting the earth were a bit overthe top. Likely, the object was very small, disintegrated before impact, and anything that might have reached the ground intact would have been cold to the touch. The full story is here"
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Pennsylvania Meteor Report More

Pennsylvania Meteor Report

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  • Posted by dxkj:

    They didnt mention the several people injured by the broken glass, and one man blinded. The real question is, did someone travel into the future and exact vengeance on their enemy by sending this "rock" to fall in the right place at the right time to blind the future from the enemies of the past...
  • correct... go check the urban legands website
    (I'm too lazy to go find it) Some guys from nasa tested a penny frop in a vacumn chamber.
    It's fast, a penny dropped from the ESB would likely only sting. They predict that you could probably catch it in your hand.
  • OK - figger this thing was a coupla thousand pounds entering the atmosphere, likely well (!!!) under 2000 pounds total (remember it broke up) when it hit the ground if it did come down in discernable parts. Truth be told it was probably a few pounds total on the ground but we'll be generous.

    No take a look at the speed - I don't actually know what the terminal velocity of of rock is but I'm guessing 150-300 MPH. Sounds impressive 'till you realize that there are cars that can hit the low end of that. It's fast but we're talking terrestrial-fast, not astronomical-fast.

    So, now figger what damage a sports car going very very fast would do to the county: Not much. Seriously - a sports car weighs around a thousand pounds or so, what would one do if it hit a particularly hard part of the county - say slamming into a cliff along the highway?

    Oh, the neighbors might hear the impact or notice the new ditch next door but we're not talking plowing-up-the-earth walls-of-flame call-out-the-Nat'l-Guard stuff here. It's a thud & likely a good thud but still a thud.

    Even doubling the speed of the car doesn't do all that much - you just get a stronger thud that would rattle the dishes & crack some plaster on houses close by but that's about it. Now make it a car that's solid all of the way though - still just a big thud. Folks a few blocks away might hear & feel it but still not going to rattle any seismographs in the next state, probably not even ruin any houses it doesn't actually hit up against.

    For comparison btw recall that a similar meteor behaved about the same of northern Canada last year and how many parts from it were found on the surface of a frozen lake. Not punched-though but laying on top of the ice melting through slowly - from solar-heat (like any rock on a frozen lake.) Not glowing hot, not punching through the ice, just sitting there.

  • We're talking a couple thousand pounds; aerodynamic forces are going to overwhelm any initial velocities this thing has. If we were talking a small mountain then yeah, the atmosphere wouldn't be so much of an issue but in this scale its the largest factor. Meteors don't come in at that great a velocity (and ok I'm cheating - I used to teach this stuff.)
  • Yes darling - it would start out big.

    In this case possibly up to a coupla meters. However a cold rock dropped into an atmosphere with a extremely hot pressure gradient ahead of it ablates pretty fast, by the time it comes down to ground level we're talking a total mass of possibly a few tons and likely distributed amongst several objects. For numbers it's gonna hit the atmosphere at 10-70 km/second, at the bottom will be going a couple hundred kph, the same speed as if it had been dropped from a tall building.

    You're right if it's city-block size or greater; it's gonna come down, come down hard & our atmosphere ain't gonna do much for us. But for things much smaller life is a lot rougher for them, better for us. For something under 50m the majority of it will burn up in the atmosphere & the local effects will be minimal.

    For some more numbers a 3m diameter object of meteoric metals (x3.5 mass of generic terrestrial rock, a stony (chondrite) would be x1.5) could weigh up to 100 tons and upon impact would create a crater 3 - 5m in diameter. It's kinetic energy is the product of the mass and the square of the velocity. Impressive, but not hazardous outside of it's immediate vicinity & certianly of no danger to the county*.

    Finally here's a MPEG [nasa.gov] of a stony coming in through the atmosphere & hitting a parked car in Peekskill NY on Oct. 9, 1992 - it was 12Kg when recovered.

    * For non-US readers a "County" is a subsection of a State often encompassing several towns or perhaps a city, not all States have them & their application varies greatly.

  • Objects in space don't contend with an atmosphere. For ones under a 50m diameter this is a crucial difference, for ones over 100m not so important. For more details see this posting [slashdot.org].

  • B'cause they not propelled (or are you of the "Greys" school of thought?)

    Objects generally enter the atmosphere at 10-30Kps if they're asteroidial in origin, 40-70Kps if cometary. If they're big enough aerodynamic effects are negligable - that's a couple hundred meters in diameter & would have disasterous effect upon impact.

    However for objects below 50 meters the atmosphere is all crucial - they'll often get so chewed up that nothing makes it down coherent (depends on trajectory, composition and how it comes apart.)

    As this object was only a few meters in size initially it's unlikely (though not impossible) that anything recognizable made it to the surface. Certianly it was well within the size limit at which it would have been slowed to it's terminal velocity.

    Once folks get away from this idea that we're talking about giant objects slamming into the surface at impossible speeds it all becomes much more realistic. Meteors are bright, they're definitely very impressive coming down, but all of that energy is from the object slowing & ablating.

    In this case one could simulate the impact by dropping a frozen cannonball or dense rock from a 30 story or so height, possibly just tossing some gravel or ball bearings, most likely dust. Not exactly gonna cause disaster in the county huh?

  • Starts out car sized at the top of the atmosphere, ends up baseball-sized or smaller at the bottom if anything at all makes it to the surface (depends on trajectory, composition, and how the thing ablates.)
  • you REALLY should check your facts... it was the "Erodium P.U.36 Explosive Space Disintegrator" that was employed by the nefarious Marvin the Martian..

    Check your own facts, bub. It is quite clearly the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator [primenet.com] (spelling of 'Illudium' may vary). If you want to claim something else, find an audio clip.

    (I just love the way Marvin the Martian says "modulator".)



    --
  • Apparently, he had a sign that said, "Ten dollars to see it, twenty dollars to watch me jack off."

    --
  • Bounce!

    Then of course you'd have to go back into space to get it back...

    Pope

    What? Bear is driving car? How can that be?!

  • I'd like to see a car that weighs 30 tonnes. "Woohoo, look at that pavement fly!" H. Simpson.
  • But look at the parent of my comment:

    "um... According to the article it was 1 to 2 meters across and 30 metric tons.

    That sounds car-sized to me."

    I was taking a bit of a liberty with the definition of "car-sized" in that context to make an obscure Simpsons reference.
  • This post was intended as a reply to "Unsurprising"...
  • Quote:

    "If this was a rocky asteroid, then it probably measured between 1 and 2 meters across and weighed 30 or so metric tons."

    That sounds at least "car sized" by any definition I can think of.

    If a car-sized meteor*ite* landed, it would definitely been bigger news...
  • They said it was car-sized, never said it weight as much as a car.
  • Thanks for the clarification. I had always just assumed that the huge initial velocities would make the atmosphere irrelevant.
    --
  • No take a look at the speed - I don't actually know what the terminal velocity of of rock is but I'm guessing 150-300 MPH.
    Why would you think that a meteor would be limited by terminal velocity?
    --
  • I don't know about a penny, but I have seen what happens when a bolt fall off the top of an oil derrick and hits someone's helmet:

    Think 2 inch deep impact mark.

    Fortunately, the helmet was steel, and the person I knew who had this happen to him (I was a kid at the time) didn't get killed...

    Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!
  • How about a Ningi dropped on the planet from space?

    "Money
    Monetary units - none.

    In fact there are three freely convertible currencies in the Galaxy, but none of them count. The Altairian Dollar has recently collapsed, the Flanian Pobble bead is only exchangeable for other Flanian Pobble Beads, and the Triganic Pu has its own very special problems. Its exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu is simple enough, but since a Ningi is a rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Ningis are not negotiable currency, because the Galactibanks refuse to deal in fiddling small change. From this basic premise it is very simple to prove that the Galactibanks are also the product of a deranged imagination."

    Just think of the havoc THAT hyperaccelerated piece of small change would cause.

  • What was the name of that movie? Was it "Creepshow?" It doesn't seem like many people caught it (or they don't think it's funny.)

    If it makes you feel any better, I thought your comment was funny.

    ____________________
  • >was very small, disintegrated before impact, and anything that might have reached the ground intact would have been cold to the touch

    so what they're saying is that the UFO was small, capable of disintegration at very high speeds (obviously a sign of an advanced life form), and cold, eh? They were probably just searching for some nice hot cambells chick noodle soup ...
  • The penny thing seems like an urban legend to me. Doesn't a penny (or any object) reach a terminal velocity based on its weight and aerodynamics? I am thinking that a penny would reach terminal velocity after a few meters. I'm not saying it wouldn't hurt like hell, but I doubt it would penetrate the block of a Lincoln Town Car.
  • Terminal velocity is not an instant thing... it takes time to reach terminal velocity. Objects in space travel at huge speeds... many many thousands of km/hour. The object would not have decelerated to terminal velocity before it hit the ground. If you look at the damage that screws cause when they collide with spacecraft in space, you'll see why a small meteorite could cause HUGE damage.
  • A Smallville couple, Mr. and Mrs. Kent, were arrested today on child kidnapping charges. The couple alleges they "found" the child in a corn field near their farm. Mr. Kent is undergoing tests at the Smallville Psychiatric Hospital while the authorities attempt to locate the childs parents.
  • No, of course you didn't see a flaming ball of death fall from the sky.

    It was most likely swamp gas reflected off the planet Venus.
    Or a weather balloon, perhaps.

    But I would certainly not tell anyone that I saw a fireball the other night.

    --

  • Unnamed witnesses spoke of seeing author Stephen King dressed as a hayseed and approaching the object one it landed.

    Witnesses heard Mr. King exclaim "Meteor shit!" at which point he smabled back to his shotgun shack muttering abuot "washing it off."

    Mr. King was later unable to be found for comment. However, his shack did appear to be very well-stocked with houseplants and lush flora.
  • It was a small rocketship carrying a strange young visitor from another planet, with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men!
  • Even the meteors are getting downsized...
  • This is unsurprising, since a car-sized metor would have basically blown up a good size chunk of whatever county it landed in ... if you read the original story it was saying baseball sized or thereabouts Where did it say the object was baseball sized? The original story said it was 1-2 meters across. Also, the article said thae object could have been 30 tons! By comparison my car weighs about 2,500 lbs, or about 1.2 tons. So this object could have weighed about 15 cars! That would be a pretty heavy/large baseball... certainly not regulation.
  • From the link [nasa.gov] at the top of the slashdot article (which might have changed), it says: "At the heart of Monday's fireball, however, was a solitary object -- perhaps a small asteroid or a piece of a comet" ... "If this was a rocky asteroid, then it probably measured between 1 and 2 meters across and weighed 30 or so metric tons"

  • Oddly enough... (Score:4)

    by daeley ( 126313 ) on Friday July 27, 2001 @01:05PM (#2187883) Homepage
    According to the report, Mark Wahlberg emerged from the 'object.'

  • I've got to believe that if there was a big chunk of space crud that was going to hit Mother Earth that The Powers That Be wouldn't tell us about it until it hit us.

    It'd be pretty easy to argue that if we didn't see it coming then it wouldn't be nearly as bad as if we had a week of hysteria and apocalyptic reactions to the event

  • Of course you don't want anyone hurt or any serious damage done, but these things are great for science. They contain a lot of information about the early solar system that got chewed up on Earth a long time ago. Life on Mars nonwithstanding there are a lot of worthwhile questions which can be answered by meteors, such as what conditions were like when the planets were forming. (That's also one of the things moon rocks are good for...)

    Plus, on a social note, now we don't get another round of asteroid movies. So much for seeing Jim Carrey climbing around on a metor and screaming as he gets stuck and rides it into Cleveland...
  • I think it might have gotten more media attention...
  • no no no - it went through the ground into an underground cave, and now there is strange fungus and flatworms living around it.
  • It seems as if the website Astronomy Picture of the Day at NASA might have a picture of it tommorow as they show tommorow's imaging being "Northeast Fireball"
    Astronomy Picture of the Day [nasa.gov]
  • Eyewhitnesses accounts are often the least reliable method of determining the truth of events. Ask any cop...

    +++++++++++++++++++++
  • I believe the term you're looking for is "fell down"

    +++++++++++++++++++++
  • Referring to the Dr. Suess book, "Horton Hears a Who", we can confirm that reading page 12 backwards reveals the ETA of Armageddon (end of life as we know it), and you are all wrong in your estimates. See for yourself, it's in the book.
  • you REALLY should check your facts... it was the "Erodium P.U.36 Explosive Space Disintegrator" that was employed by the nefarious Marvin the Martian...
  • if not the fireball what scorched the cornfield?
  • um... According to the article it was 1 to 2 meters across and 30 metric tons.

    That sounds car-sized to me.
  • My mother lives about 30 miles from the corn field in question. When I asked her about it, she said she heard a loud bang, but thought nothing of it, as there are are always several rednecks sigthing in their deer rifles making similar noises.
    Don't come to north central PA looking for moon rocks in corn fields. The rednecks are restless and they don't like geeks (that's why I moved away!)
  • I heard them say that scientists were speculating that something called a bolus, I think, fell from space, broke up, and burned as it fell towards Earth. I almost choked at the stupidity of it. We just call those things in space meteors, and if they hit the planet surface they are meteorites.
    Actually, according to the story [nasa.gov], scientists call that sort of phenomenon a "bolide":
    the terms fireball and
    bolide are often confused -- even by professional astronomers. A fireball is a meteor at least as bright as the planet Venus (visual magnitude -3 or -4). A bolide is a fireball that explodes, often with sound effects.
  • Turns out the scorched corn field in Pennsylvania, and the reports of car sized space rocks hitting the earth were a bit overthe top.

    Are you implying that the US media wasn't completely factual regarding this incident? ;)
  • Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
  • the reports of car sized space rocks hitting the earth

    Why is it that everything falling from the sky is compared in size to a car? I mean, in the movie Armageddon, they were "Baskeballs and Volkswagons", the chunks of MIR were "as large as a car" and now, people were saying that a falling object was "car-sized".

    This reminds me of how they say that voracious fish can skeletonize a cow in less than X minutes. Are these some kind of bizarre empirial system measurement? What's the metric equivalent?

  • Do you know what alien life form leaves a green spectral trail?
  • Flaming balls that go down in corn fields.
  • even the 6 that popped up while I was typing that.
  • If the METEOR--a meteor is a fiery streak in the sky, not a physical object--were caused by an object measuring 1 to 2 meters (or even 2,000 meters) across, the object would not have been an asteriod. By definition, an ASTEROID is a celestial body with a diameter ranging from a few to several hundred kilometers. "A few" kilometers is at least three, and three kilometers is 3,000 meters. If the celestial body is smaller than an asteriod--say, 2 or 200 or 2,000 meters across--it is a METEOROID. If the object makes it through the atmosphere and hits the earth, it becomes a METEORITE. A meteorite can begin as the rocky core of a comet, as an asteroid, or as a meteoroid. If it is a meteoroid, it might also be a chunk of Kryptonite from an exploded planet in another solar system.
  • I live in the (hick) town where it landed. It's called Salladasburg. Has about the same area has williamsport and 1/100th the population :P No meteor landed as far as i can tell :(
  • Trust me. It was MUCH MORE than a gunshot. First, i thought the roof caved in, then I thought it was a propane tanker exploding. Definatley louder than gunshot.
  • that's what theywant you to think
  • It's coming. We have about three weeks left.
  • Do I detect a lisp?
  • My father sagely pointed out that the only reason to worry would have been if the -whatever- landed in Selinsgrove. Portent of doom, anyone?

  • Over the top? (Score:3)

    by geekplus ( 248023 ) on Friday July 27, 2001 @01:19PM (#2187910)
    Then perhaps you'd care to explain the 8" diameter, heat-cauterized, crater in my chest?

    No, the answer is not Cowboy Neal!

  • If we're lucky, this will scare my Grandmother so much, she won't be able to drive... which is a frightening experience.

    If we're really lucky, one of these suckers will land right on her car... making doubly sure she won't be able to drive.

    Ratguy

  • More to the point, it begs the question - car sized when it hit the atmosphere? WHich it likely was - and as the article says probably nothing much hit the earth. The difference between something the size of a car hitting the atmosphere and something the size of a car by the time it reaches the earth is HUGE.

  • Unsurprising... (Score:5)

    by nanojath ( 265940 ) on Friday July 27, 2001 @01:20PM (#2187913) Homepage Journal
    This is unsurprising, since a car-sized metor would have basically blown up a good size chunk of whatever county it landed in, not just scorched a cornfield.

    Actually, for that matter if you read the original story it was saying baseball sized or thereabouts. If anything was the size of a car, maybe the fireball was, but that says next to nothing about the size of the actual meteor.

    Believe me, when a car-sized meteor hits a populated area you won't need to go to Slashdot to hear the story.

  • I type this with only my left hand, my right is clutching my bottle of Head and Shoulders. Mousing is difficult, but I encourage all you you do to the same.
  • I type this with only my left hand, my right is clutching my bottle of Kryptonite. Mousing is difficult, but I encourage all you you do to the same.
  • If they no longer contain demons then they are exor-sized.

    If they are Jewish then they are circum-sized.
  • Damn Godless ateroids!
    Kill them all, I say.
  • The amount of damage a free-falling coin does to the body follows a curve.

    1 meter... Ouch, I think I just got stung!
    10 stories... Hey, who dropped the baseball?
    100 stories.. Hey, I've passed out!
    250 stories.. Check it out, I'm dead!
    3 km... What's this penny doing in my chest cavity, and what's the deal with this hole in my head?
    Long story short, by the time it is being dropped from above the atmosphere, it's just ash... or molten metal. There's probably an altitude for molten metal before ash.
  • You don't seem to understand.
    I DO NOT OWN A LINCOLN TOWN CAR.
    Better to stay inside, away from the city.
  • If a penny dropped from a very tall building is capable of killing someone, I worry about thousands of peices of rocks falling from the sky. I'm not comfortable thinking about the possiblility that my life could be suddenly and unexpectedly ended by an event so stupid. It's better to stay inside and post on Slashdot.

    My #2 irrational fear?
    Getting hit with a super-accelerated penny.
  • If they were car-sized in the U.S. they would be Europe-sized.
  • 30 metric tons or so of rock is what you have in a rock a couple of meters in diameter. At least that is what the guy said in the article. That would give a significant force. The terminal velocity of a human at close to sea level pressure is 120 mph and a rock is a whole lot more dense. If the rock could survive long enought to slow to a terminal velocity it would probably be on the order of several hundred miles an hour. That is still quite a lot of destructive power. Once the rocks start getting big enough to survive until they hit the earth the destructive power will start going up exponentially. The bigger the rock that hits the atmosphere the larger the percentage of it that remains to strike the earth. Less of it gets burnt up in the atmoshere and less velocity is shed. Bolides come in fast but slow rapidly because they lose mass rapidly. But, they still have a terminal velocity far in excess of what any car can do (except for those land speed record setters).
  • So Marvin the Martian could not destroy the earth with the eludion-235 detonator anyway.
    Best he could do is some Pennsylvania cornfield.

  • ...but according to NASA while it might have been a couple of meters across, and 30 metric tons, when it entered the atmosphere, it certainly was nowhere near that when it impacted the group -- if it even did.

    Preliminary reports from the cornfield seem to indicate little or no evidence of an actual impact; which would seem to indicate that whatever it was burned up before it reached the ground (as they usually do).

    -Coach-

  • well, (Score:4)

    by cosmo7 ( 325616 ) on Friday July 27, 2001 @01:07PM (#2187925) Homepage
    if they had fallen in Europe they'd be car-sized.
  • It said it was baseball sized in the CNN article that was liked at the top of the original /. article. I commented on it at the time. Why did /. have a "Our local Fox affiliate is reporting a compact-car size metior may have hit north central PA Monday evening" statement when the CNN story linked to said in fact a baseball sized meteorite didn't even hit the ground? Where did it say it was 1-2 meters? Are diferent people seeing links to different stories????
  • It was painful to see them quote someone from FAA as saying it might be a "meteor shower." They'll quote anybody who answers the phone in the first 10 minutes after the news breaks. I'm glad Donald Yeomans set it straight. I remember using his diagrams to plan my observations of Comet Halley.
  • Personally, I like the asteroid scare much more than the "red" scare.. We can't have a hotline to an asteroid, no emergency meeting.. An asteroid has no remorse and it makes for decent disaster movies.. If it wasn't for the possibility of our obliteration why would we ever go to the movies.. and once the movie industry fails...we as a culture are doomed..

    ohh..I like that..
    I think that should be the next big scare..

    "Nothing to be scared of!"
    --
  • When I was a kid the house up the street from me got hit with a meteorite. Went right through the roof, through the second floor, bounced around all crazy-like in the downstairs before finally coming to a stop.

    Scared the hell out of me. I was certain my house was next. Though I remember thinking it would be pretty cool to have my own meteorite.

    -J5K

  • So does that make us all apes?
  • I do hope you mean while she is sitting safely on her couch, watching news reports about SUV-sized things falling from outer space. The news coverage did make this sound like it has never happened before. I heard them say that scientists were speculating that something called a bolus, I think, fell from space, broke up, and burned as it fell towards Earth. I almost choked at the stupidity of it. We just call those things in space meteors, and if they hit the planet surface they are meteorites. From the news stories, you would expect Mark Walburg to emerge from it, as another post said.
  • Space has a terrible secret [jonathonrobinson.com]!
    But did any of you listen? Now please, go stand by the stairs, the space robots are coming to protect us.
  • Crap. So close to Williamsport, yet so far away. And here I was hoping it was punishment from [insert desired religious icon here] sent to my ex fiance (who attends Lycoming College) for what she did to me. Oh well, a man can dream, can't he?

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