Meteorite Strikes Indian Village 350
PS writes "The BBC is reporting that a village in eastern India was struck by a meteorite Saturday evening, wrecking several houses and injuring about twenty people. Fortunately, no one appears to have been killed by the impact or subsequent fires. CNN suggests that a second village near the impact site may have also been struck by part of the meteorite." Human/meteorite encounters are not entirely unheard of.
Re:What's all this then? (Score:3, Interesting)
Chicago Field Museum has some good meteor examples (Score:5, Interesting)
I was at the Field Museum this past week and got a real kick out of the meteor exhibits. They had several large metalic meteors that were out in the open free to touch. Putting my hand on it and thinking about it flying though space, to be rudely blocked by the planet earth. It wasn't it's fault that there was some stupid planet in the way... Anyway, they also had several examples of meteorites hitting houses. In once case it went through the guys garage, through his car and bounced off the cars muffler, ending up sitting on the car seat. Another one took out a guys gutter. The pictures are pretty funny, all the guys looked pretty pissed off, but it was in the 20s or 30s, maybe people didn't smile back then.
Field Museum Meteor collection [fieldmuseum.org]
Sneaky Slashdot Editors (Score:1, Interesting)
It's pretty sneaky and dishonest how they make these revisions without an Update tag, or updating the timestamp.
Thus, it looks like those that complained were delusional or mistaken, when it was really the idiotic editor's fault.
It's no surprise to find that michael was the editor of this story. He is truly a despicable and untrustworthy character.
Re:Be thankful (Score:2, Interesting)
But small ones such as this happen rather frequently; in October 1992, there was one hitting NY, but the only thing it damaged was... a parked car's trunk
Wake up mods (Score:5, Interesting)
As for why we get news of something with a remote chance of hitting Earth - that's because these objects are typically hundreds, if not thousands of metres across. If one of these hit, it would kill millions of people, and possibly wipe out most macroscopic life as we know it. That's why you hear about them.
What landed in India was a few inches across at best, or you wouldn't see "20 people injured, no deaths". And detecting even a tiny fraction of the things in space at that size is well nigh impossible. Meteors of this size hit the planet all the time, but almost always land in remote areas.
Oct. 8-14, 1871: Peshtigo, Wisconsin (Score:2, Interesting)
Oct. 8-14, 1871: Peshtigo, Wisconsin: over 1,500 lives lost and 3.8 million acres burned in nation's worst forest fire. Cause Unknown
Peshtigo is about 130 miles due north of Chicago.
Same day as the great Chicago fire.
The Hammer of God (Score:2, Interesting)
With sufficient acceleration one basketball-size meteoride can inflict far more damage than a 9/11-style terrorist attack.
this is exactly what the US worried about May 2002 (Score:2, Interesting)
Something seems wrong with this report (Score:5, Interesting)
Though the CNN article credits Press Trust of India, a search on PTI's site found nothing (for me at least).
When the articles talked about burning fragments, it didn't ring true. So, I went to Google to do a little quick research.
Except for those really huge impacts, smaller meteorites are relatively slow movers in the lower reaches of the atmosphere and lose their heat rather quickly. Let me steal some work from:
Date: Mon Nov 30 23:28:41 1998 [madsci.org]
Posted By: Robert Macke, Grad student, Physics, Washington University
Area of science: Astronomy
If you have a baseball-sized meteorite of density 3.2 g/cc, using a value of 1.2 kg/m^3 for the density of air, you will find that the meteorite will slow from its approach velocity of roughly 11000 meters per second to its terminal velocity of 60 m/s in a mere 28 seconds, having traveled only 3 km. (By comparison, the speed of sound is roughly 315 m/s.) It then spends another 100 mins or so falling before it hits the ground, giving it ample time to cool down below its original temperature it gained during entry into the atmosphere. (At 60 m/s, it's moving like a fastball, but not much more. It'll still cause a lot of damage if your car or house is in the way, but it wouldn't start a fire or create any appreciable crater. It would probably be a bit warm to the touch.
Any learned assistance would be appreciated. I'm not adverse to being shown to be wrong in a subject that I have little more than passing knowledge.
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)
Nobody believed him when he tried to report it, other than making "Joe Dirt" references, so it's now mine.
Neat side notes - The outside surface has visible feathery outside surface from how it was eroding as it traveled. Also the iron softenes up nicely - you can even see how it deformed some from the impact, and there's a smooth curved arc in the front when it rotated briefly just after impact.
Very cool... I'd post a URL to the pics, but I don't want to pay for the
Re:Ann Coulter (Score:2, Interesting)
Conservative Christians (CC)? who said about CCs. I have plenty of literate, educated, honest CC friends. and they all can see through Ms. Coulter. She is not a model CC and I hope you do not think of her as one. Have you tried listening to any of her points or read her book? Please! For example, she claims Joseph McCarthy was a god-send. C'mon people. Joe Mac was as big a disaster in violating civil rights as any one. Not one self-respecting CC would give a cent of credibility to Joe Mac. She's a sensationalist. Kind of like Bill O'Reilly. And, we all know they are both big fat liars.
On another topic, Al Franken caught Bill on so many lies in his latest book, and he goes cry-baby everytime he meets Al. Bill and Ann: desstroying the American CC viewpoint faster then Bush/Chenney destroying American economy.
BTW, I do respect many CC politcians and viewpoints. Some of the more considerate and sensible people in the CC field are: McCain, Powell, Jesus, Reagan (for the most part), among many others.
--jpu8086
Re:Ann Coulter (Score:3, Interesting)
"it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle then for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven".
Jesus was a hippie. BTW, I'm engaged to a devout Anglican, and she thinks that people like Coulter are an embarrasment to Christians worldwide.
Meteors have killed. (Score:3, Interesting)
The Nakhla meteorite [nasa.gov] you are referring to killed just one dog. Several people have been injured by meteorites. (I remember at least one local newspaper story of a guy who got a fist-sized meteorite through his windshield at 80 km/h, and was injured when he drove off the road.)
A meteor does not necessarily reach ground, it may burn entirely in the atmosphere. In contrast, a meteorite hits the ground.
In 1908 the Tunguska meteor [earthsci.org] injured several people, one of them died a few days later. Dozens of reindeer got killed, and they were 30 km away. I assume some wild animals closer to the site were also killed, but the site was searched only in 1920s so we have no record on that. The blast was equivalent to 15 Megatonnes, so only one dead human is really good luck.