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U.S. East Coast Bombarded By ... What? 171

Posted by timothy from the sweet-hunka-burnin'-love dept.
gmr2048 writes: "Our local Fox affiliate is reporting a compact-car size metior may have hit north central PA Monday evening. CNN story here. Too bad I missed it :("

The loyal fjordboy writes: "At about 6:30 EST this evening, many meteors broke apart and headed south coming from Canada. I was able to witness the meteor flying overhead in Trout Run, PA and it was spectacular. There was an incredible bright flash and then a meteor with an incredible tail. A few minutes after it had left, a sound shook the ground and buildings in the vicinity. It even set off some car alarms in the parking lot." Anyone else out there see this in person?
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U.S. East Coast Bombarded By ... What? More

U.S. East Coast Bombarded By ... What?

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  • Re:Slow sound? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I hereby propose a change from the standard unit of energy to be, instead of the Joule, the Fatman.. one unit of which is the kinetic energy of a 5'6" foot tall fat man "falling down." There of course will have to be experimentation to determine this contest, but I am sure that there will be no problem finding candidates in the Slashdot audience.

    I'll be publishing a paper on this called "Joule and the Fatman."

  • Re:Link to space.com story (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Correct URL (no, not goatsex :) http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/ meteor_eastcoast_010723.html [space.com]

  • Re:polite meteor (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think this is an article with pictures about the meteor hitting a car trunk http://www.nyrockman.com/meteorite/car/peeks.htm

  • Re:polite meteor (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    No, actually it punched through the rear end of the car (entered through the top, went through the trunk and spare tire, tore a hole in the chasis, and put a pit in the concrete) and was embedded in the poor lady's driveway. She was scared out of her wits and filed a police report. The first stupid cop on the scene said something like, "It's vandalism. Looks like someone threw a rock through this lady's car." No, I'm not kidding. Luckily for her, some collector bought the car as a souvenir. Neat story actually. Saw it on one of those "Three Minutes to Impact" sort of shows on the Discovery Channel.
  • I saw it also. I was driving on 490 in Rochester, NY, when I saw a yellow-orange streak to the south about 10-15 degrees above the horizon. I dismissed the sighting as a very strange reflection or my imagination because I saw it out of the corner of my eye and couldn't be sure what I saw. But now I know what it was... cool.
  • just meteors/comets which had entered the atmosphere and did what they do best...
    Had a comet entered the atmosphere, today would be very dark and most of the human race would be dead. Comets are typical much larger than the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs.

  • Lucky it was only a compact car and not your usual Yank SUV or there wouldn't be much of Pennsylvania left....

  • Slow sound? (Score:4)

    by Eric Sharkey ( 1717 ) <sharkey@lisaneric.org> on Monday July 23, 2001 @07:59PM (#65859)
    Sonic booms were heard up to 100 miles from the meteor's path ... would have been traveling between 100 mph and 200 mph.

    Wow. Anything that can travel less than 200 mph and still make sonic booms is worth a headline.

    Where do they get these reporters? Slashdot?
  • Since experts had not predicted a meteor shower for Monday, whatever was responsible for the sightings was probably small, he said.

    "We would have tracked a big one, and known it was coming," he said.

    The smallest size the lab can detect is 10 to 20 meters in diameter, but Monday's was probably much smaller than 10 meters, he said.

    Hmm...small, seemingly innocent meteors striking our planet. Too small for we humans to detect or be concerned about (if you think a 10 meter object is 'small').

    Isn't this how the Gamilons put the Smack Down on Earth in "Star Blazers [starblazers.com]"?!? Small meteors that we didn't pay attention to at first, until their radiation began killing us off?!?

    Sound the alarms!!!
    Ready the Argo!!! [starblazers.org] (or Yamato for those in Japan)
    Prepare to fire...the Waaaave Motion Gun!!!
    Onward to Iscandar!!!

  • Got a link to the story of that extremely lucky flight attendant? I'd like to see something that indicates this is more than urban legend.
  • Basically, No.

    Try not to think of it as a Shield. What Bush is proposing is not even remotely comprehensive defense from large numbers of missles. It is meant as a point defense against less than 5 launches.

    Futher, the missle defense systems are most likely to target the boost phase of the missle launch. We're supposed to be sitting near by the bad-missile-launching-country at see in military vessles carrying boost-phase anti-missle wepons.

    The kind of defenses envisioned in Bush's VERY LIMITED anti-missle system would have no applicability to anti-meteor defense. Basically, unless we get a few years advanced warning about metor impact, we're screwed big time.
  • CNN
    Witnesses said the object appeared to be traveling from southeast to northwest, "which means it was heading inland," Baalke said. fjordboy
    At about 6:30 EST this evening, many meteors broke apart and headed south coming from Canada. Someone's confused.
    cb
  • No sweat. Your mistake was assuming the accuracy of CNN ;D.
    This, the same CNN that during the 1997 northern plains flooding, expressed concern that "now that Grand Forks (North Dakota) has suffered, the residents of Fargo are nervous", until apparently someone pointed out that Fargo had been flooded a couple days previous, that Fargo was upriver from Grand Forks. So then the map showed Fargo located north of Grand Forks (after all, we all know rivers flow down on the map). More blatantly was about a year before (but I don't remember the news story) when they showed North Dakota labeled "South Dakota" and vice-versa. Whoda thunk that South Dakota was actually north of North Dakota!?
    cb
  • I bet it was the Russians, trying to avenge what you people did to Dmitry Skylarov...
    You'd better thank whatever you believe in that their weapons arsenal had a decade to rot since Soviet times.
    --
  • More likely it to show that the windows were up.
  • (+1: First /. post to make me laugh aloud in a long time [besides trolls, of course])
  • Did you read the article? It says it could have been as small as a baseball... or as large as 10 meters across. No, a car-sized meteor wouldn't have necessarily caused any major damage.
  • Energy is proportional to mass. Mass goes by the cube of the linear dimensions. Thus, a 10-meter meteor is 3*3*3 = 27 times less massive than a 30-meter meteor.

    Where the heck did your statement about pollution come from? Volcanoes emit lots of pollutions because the toss inredible amounts of crap into the atmosphere. Where would a 10-meter meteor get all the crap? Even if it lands and makes a small crater, dirt just isn't that harmful in the air.

  • I'm still looking for that crashed alien ship with a big green lantern inside...

  • I've also read the flight attendant story - it was on a Russian or Eastern European airline IIRC. The plane broke up, the stewardess was forced into and held in the tail section by either air pressure or the G forces, and apparently the tail section's intact control surfaces were enough to slow it for a survivable landing.

    Of course, I can't remember where I saw the story. I don't think it was online.

  • Hmmm, I must have missed that issue :)

    Considering the shapes of some of the other members in the Green Lantern Corps, familiarity with alternate sexualities might have been pretty helpful, though...

  • Zat vas just a varning shot... (Score:5)

    by Linux Freak ( 18608 ) on Monday July 23, 2001 @08:10PM (#65874) Homepage
    Ze next von, comradeskees, vill be pointed at ze capitaliste pigz at Adobe.

  • Re:With apologies to HG Wells. . . (Score:3)

    by Paul Lamere ( 21149 ) on Tuesday July 24, 2001 @03:09AM (#65875) Homepage Journal
    That's John BigbooTAY
  • Ease down. He was making fun of reporters. We can all agree that we get to make fun of reporters. : )
  • It would indeed slow down to some terminal velocity, but not the terminal velocity associated with people falling out of airplanes. Since the rock has a much higher mass per cross sectional area than a person does, and it is carrying a large amount (a VERY large amount) of kinetic energy into the atmosphere with it, the terminal velocity is going to be VERY high. The actual terminal velocity would be a function of density, the initial velocity, and the thermodynamic properties of the incoming meteorite. The thing would be ablating all the way down, so your energy balance gets exciting...

    Hmm. If I put my mind to it, I could probably do a numerical simulation, but what it would tell you is this: the atmosphere is not deep enough, nor does it have a long enough chord line tangent to the Earth's surface, to bring the thing down to its terminal velocity (which, again, would still be really fast. Like, many times the speed of sound.)

    Hokay?
  • The atmosphere is not deep enough for the meteorite to reach its terminal velocity. (in other words, it's going to be decelerating all the time, never reaching equilibrium). It's coming in REALLY REALLY fast, and even when it dumps a bunch of mass into the atmosphere, and slows down a lot, it's still going to be going REALLY fast.

  • Re:Slow sound? (Score:5)

    by Moofie ( 22272 ) <lee@ringofsaturn . c om> on Monday July 23, 2001 @08:50PM (#65879) Homepage
    Not so. Terminal velocity derives from the force balance of an object with (more or less) zero kinetic energy falling towards earth, and the drag force that object encounters.

    Essentially, your energy balance looks like this:

    PEinitial=KEfinal+Edrag

    where Edrag is the total energy lost over the fall due to drag (IE integrate the drag over the distance fallen).

    PEinitial is a function of height above ground (OK, fine, distance from the center of the earth, but it's a difference so your zero point doesn't matter...you get the idea.)

    KEfinal is equal to .5*M*V^2, where M is mass and V is the final velocity of the object. Since drag varies as the square of velocity (for a relatively flat plate normal to the free stream) your velocity goes up to some rather modest figure, and then stabilizes at the so-called terminal velocity.

    A meteorite is coming into the atmosphere at Ludicrous Speed, and basically doesn't give a fuck about what the atmosphere thinks about it. : ) The meteorite ablates, producing a VERY impressive light show, and makes shock waves in the atmosphere (which do slow it down rather quickly)...but it never slows down to a piddly 200mph.

    Also note that 200mph is a not-bad estimate for terminal velocity of a person, but since a rock has substantially higher mass per surface area (wing loading, if you will) the terminal velocity will be much much higher. (Basically, weight force is larger compared to drag force).

    Now you are enlightened. : )
  • he said it impacted at 100-200mph, as "the atmosphere slows it quite a bit". so it was going considerably faster at some point, thus the sonic boom.
  • From the article:
    "We originally got a report of a plane crash and now it seems there were multiple meteors coming down," said Tara Dolzani, a supervisor at the Schuylkill County communications center in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.

    Have you EVER heard a more transparent cover up? Clearly, this is only the first stage of the invasion, so we better start preparing now! Call your neighbors, let everyone know! Head for the hills!
  • ok, i'll bite. what kind of enemy is envisioned here? what documents are you citing with these claims?

    the assumption that backed proliferation was that of mutually assured destruction: rubble bouncing and whatnot. if this plan for a limited missile defense is meant to protect against so few weapons, the enemy it would seem to assume is either one with extremely limited means (in which case involvement in a shooting war with the US would all but guarantee their own demise) or a failure of will (same as above).

    are these supposed enemies (the rogue states much ballyhooed) extant? are we to guard against every possible attack, no matter how ludicrous, unlikely, or illogical? i know we're not supposed to underestimate anyone who overestimates themselves, but there's a difference between overestimation and taking first-strike initiative against the US; if once you take that first shot, all you have left is your dick in your hand.

    again, what documentation are you citing? i'd be interested to read it, if only to see how it could possibly contextualize or reify the need for such a limited and specific defense against what would seem to be an attack about as likely to appear as Brigadoon.

  • Regardless of the fact that the difficulty of destroying a sufficiently large meteor would be on par with killing all the cockroaches in Chicago with a spatula, missile defense in any incarnation is as practical as trying to stop traffic on the internet by targetting routers. Sure, you could hit a lot of them, in both cases, but the way the systems are structured, something will get through. Modern weapons have such high yields that one bomb, a one-percent margin of error, could result in 20 to 30 million deaths, depending on the weapon's objective. Two little things called redundancy and mutually-assured destruction. You don't have to take my word for it. You can go to the guy [commonwealthclub.org] who [might have [bullatomsci.org]] built the thing. "Go back to bed America, your government is in control" -- George Bush pre

  • Of course, there's the obligatory "you'll never be hit by a meteorite" statement too... Let me tell you, if this meteor were to hit you, you should do two things. Buy a lottery ticket. Win a million billion dollars if you survive. Impacts of objects that size will leave very large craters and very dark, dark skies. Humans tend not to survive, but strange things have happened..."

    Actually, this particular strange thing happens more often then one might expect: Here is a NASA page listing *three* 20th century meteor strikes on US homes, one of which actually hit the occupant, a Mrs. Hodges of Alabama, in the hip, producing one heck of a bruise. Maybe astronomical odds aren't really so astronomical after all...
  • These *do* hit at 20, 30, 50 thousand miles per second


    I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant miles and not thousand miles. 50 thousand miles per second is a little less than 1/3 the speed of light. If any large rock hit the Earth going THAT fast, there'd be a lot more to worry about than a crater and nuclear winter.

    -Restil

  • Re:Slow sound? (Score:4)

    by Restil ( 31903 ) on Monday July 23, 2001 @08:36PM (#65886) Homepage
    Meteors typically enter the atmosphere at 20-70 miles per SECOND, not hour. Terminal velocity doesn't really apply to meteors, the meteor hits the ground or burns up long before it can slow down enough to reach terminal velocity.

    However, 100-200 mph is probably not a typo for mps. For a rock (of any size) to be travelling fast enough to enter the atmosphere at that speed, it would have to originate from outside the solar system, since that speed is to fast to remain in any orbit of the Sun without escaping the solar system.

    Therefore it is quite safe to say that the reporters are getting funny numbers from someplace, likely they just made it up, but THAT's never happened before, right? :)

    -Restil
  • did the person who submitted this actually read the article? It said the metior was probably about the size of a baseball...not a CAR. A CAR would have taken out a good chunk of PA...
  • damnit...I made the same spelling error too. meteor. not metior.
  • at what point? It could have started out the size of a truck and burned up to a small core piece or 5.

    no, the person who submitted it said "compact-car size metior may have hit north central PA." As in, it was the size of a car when it hit. NOT. Couldn't have been, that area of PA would be gone now. As the article actually states, it was most likely as small as a baseball.

  • Did you read the article? It says it could have been as small as a baseball... or as large as 10 meters across. No, a car-sized meteor wouldn't have necessarily caused any major damage. 10 meters across entering the earth's atmosphere. Not hitting the ground. As has been pointed out, that little bitty crater in Arizona was created by something less than 30 meters across (on impact). True, a 10 meter in diameter mereor would have been signifigantly smaller than one 30 meters in diameter, but surely you can see that one 10 meters in diameter would be VERY bad...causing more pollution than the NE coast has put off from man-made stuff in the last 20 years or so, probably...
  • Energy is proportional to mass. Mass goes by the cube of the linear dimensions. Thus, a 10-meter meteor is 3*3*3 = 27 times less massive than a 30-meter meteor. Where the heck did your statement about pollution come from? Volcanoes emit lots of pollutions because the toss inredible amounts of crap into the atmosphere. Where would a 10-meter meteor get all the crap? Even if it lands and makes a small crater, dirt just isn't that harmful in the air.

    first, the one from arizona was actually not really 30 meters. Its more like 26 (as 85feet is 25.9 meters). So, now lets do the math again...26*26*26=17576. 1000/17576. Almost 6% of the mass the one from arizona had. Hmmm...I DUNNO...SOUNDS PRETTY BAD TO ME....heh.

    second, I was talking about all the people flying through the air. It was humour. eh.

  • I remember something similar about a tail gunner in a Lancaster bomber during dubya-dubya two.
  • Right about now (Tue Jul 24 14:56:51 UTC 2001), CNN is pumping the story as "Lights in the Sky"... as if it were a mystery or something. Obviously, a cheap ploy to get people to watch the story hoping for UFO sightings.

    Now we know why the geezer who ran CNN just left; he wanted to be gone before they had the chance to chase Fox further down the gutter.

    Boss of nothin. Big deal.
    Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.

  • So let me get this straight - you think kids should be allowed to take guns to school?

  • You missed a product placement there:

    CNN Washington Bureau Chief Frank Sesno was traveling in Pennsylvania and reported hearing "what sounded like a tremendous sonic boom" through the closed windows of his air conditioned 2001 Chevy(TM) Impala. Frank was also snacking on some Snackums(TM) brand Trail Mix at the time, and washing it back with some Lipton(TM) "Brisk" Iced Tea. Afterwards, Frank made a stop at the nearest Texaco(TM) to "leak the lizard", in his own words.

    --GnrcMan--

  • I saw it (Score:5)

    by kaze ( 55923 ) <eschewed.steelrabbit@com> on Monday July 23, 2001 @08:30PM (#65897) Homepage
    I saw one, I was sitting on a stoop at 307 N 3rd in Philadelphia waiting for someone just looking around at buildings and the sky and to the NW this big fireball zoomed by; looked to be about a mile away - no sound. I hoped it was a meteor, but thought it might be a small plane or a burning fuel dump from a larger plane. It got pretty low so some of them may have hit. Real quick, just like a shooting star where if your looking the wrong place or blink you'd miss it.
  • In this day and age, I think the market could bear a "compact" car of this size. The only problem is trunk space! :)
  • Yet another NASA miscalculation? [slashdot.org]
  • CNN Washington Bureau Chief Frank Sesno was traveling in Pennsylvania and reported hearing "what sounded like a tremendous sonic boom" through the closed windows of his air-conditioned car.

    I know this is/was supposed to be funny, but the air conditioning was a relevant detail: the boom was loud enough that it could be heard through closed windows, and over the hum of air conditioning.

    This means that it was a loud boom, for those still not paying attention.
  • As opposed to a boom not loud enough to be heard through closed windows, over the hum of air conditioning.
  • Does CNN read Slashdot?
    Yes, we do.
  • It was a dark and stormy night. CNN Eashington Bureau Chief Frank (call sign "Cool Man") Sesno was driving in his luxurious freshly washed and waxed air conditioned Chevrolet, with aplomb and supreme confidence and competence in his ability to control the intricate machinery, only a distant soothing exhaust burble and the softly playing jazz on the transistor radio to disturb the spellbinding silence of the awesome night, in Pennsylvania, the Keystone State, birthplace of frontiersman Daniel Boone, John Barrymore, brother of Lionel, who played the evil Mr. Potter in "It's a Wonderful Life" (but also the beloved Captain in "Captains Courageous"), comedian Bill Cosby, and renowned actor James Stewart, state bird Ruffed Grouse, state flower Mountain Laurel, state motto "Virtue, Liberty, and Independence", home of the 76ers, Phillies, Flyers, Penguins, Pirates, and Steelers, 2nd state to ratify the US Constitution, admitted to statehood 12 December 1787, when the strangest event of his not uneventful life suddenly and unexpectedly occurred.

    (-1, derivative)
  • Ahhhsheeew!!! Thorry Sniff!
  • Does that mean property values in North Seattle will finally take a dip into normalcy? Yippee!

    j.

  • Not again... (Score:3)

    by pubudu ( 67714 ) on Monday July 23, 2001 @08:02PM (#65906)
    At about 6:30 EST this evening, many meteors broke apart and headed south coming from Canada.

    First the robotic arm, not this. It seems that /. always reports stories sure to get me in trouble for my country domain.

  • Maybe it was aliens (Score:4)

    by leucadiadude ( 68989 ) on Monday July 23, 2001 @08:24PM (#65907) Homepage
    returning a previously stolen concrete PC.
    (See previous /. story)
  • Ummm .. you didn't contradict him. No need for "Not So": he implied that a meteorite would not get down to the terminal velocity from above it => Burn, baby.
  • > Relativistic speeds? Are you sure? :)

    Actually, that's the reason for the flash. It's not because they're burning up, but rather because they're exceeding the speed of light and cause a "lightly flash" the same way as they cause a "sonic boom". Also know as a Cerencow flash [uquebec.ca]...

  • Does CNN read Slashdot? Indeed, now the sentence has been changed into:
    Frank Sesno was driving a car,
    windows rolled up, the air conditioning on, when he heard "what sounded like a sonic boom."
  • The local NBC station WGAL had coverage on the news tonight (linkage [thewgalchannel.com]) and had a deep interview with people who fell over and the all important interview with people who talked to the person who owned the farm who didn't see anywhere where something landed and scortched his corn. And my favorite is the group of witnesses "watching deer."

    Aren't we early for the Delta Aquarids they aren't expected for a few more days...
  • it probably meant horizontally - unless they are incredible stupid. Unfortunately it's probably 10x as likely that the former is correct.

  • AC (Air Conditioner) (Score:5)

    by andkaha ( 79865 ) on Monday July 23, 2001 @08:00PM (#65913) Homepage
    CNN Washington Bureau Chief Frank Sesno was traveling in Pennsylvania and reported hearing "what sounded like a tremendous sonic boom" through the closed windows of his air-conditioned car.

    It's a good thing they don't leave out any details that might turn out to be important...

  • Re:Not again... (Score:4)

    by CodeMunch ( 95290 ) on Monday July 23, 2001 @08:11PM (#65917) Homepage
    It's the next engineering trick. Instead of students hanging VW bugs from their bridges, we're tossing them from the arm. BEAT THAT! :P

    --Clay

  • If you keep reading, you'll notice they mention that it had, in fact, slowed down in the atmosphere. The article got it right.

  • Ahh! (Score:4)

    by Yoru-Hikage ( 97959 ) on Monday July 23, 2001 @08:00PM (#65919)


    So that's where I parked the Pinto...! Man, my insurance company is going to kill me...

  • Your assumption of our assumption is incorrect.

    We assume anyone living in between the two regions is a bum hick yokel or a soccer mom.

    The incorrectness of your assumption is the key to the existance of our assumption, so I would assume that further assumptions on your part will be of equally questionable accuracy, assuming of course, the assumption is made with the same kind of genuis the first one was. Our assumption stands, yours sits in a heap in the corner of the room frayed and withered from my elitest northeastern attitude.
  • The sonic boom would have come from the upper atmosphere, where the meteor would have been travelling at significant higher velocity.

    Just prior to impact, its speed would have been determined by its terminal velocity. 100-200 MPH sounds reasonable.

  • Having grown up in the Pottsville, PA area, I can attest that the locals are "hick yokels", but where do YOU live? Nothing irritates me more than the assumption of northeasterners and west coast residents that anyone living in between those two regions is a 'bum hick yokel'. Get off your elitist trip.
    --
    Were I in touch with the toilet that is humanity, I'd have flushed it long ago.
  • As opposed to the much more common "quiet" boom?

  • Re:a bright flash and then... (Score:5)

    by NumberSyx ( 130129 ) on Monday July 23, 2001 @09:31PM (#65930) Journal

    Hey, just be happy it missed you

    Are you kidding, how else am I suppose to get super powers. I mean the irradiated spider thing just doesn't work.

    Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.

  • Hey, just be happy it missed you
    Indeed.

    "To witness titanic events is always dangerous, usually painful, and often fatal ":
    Nessus the Puppeter, after the crash of 'Lying Bastard' on the Ringworld.
    from RINGWORLD by Larry Niven

    Milalwi
  • WOW I have never seen a more blanant misquote! where do you get your journlistic integrity, slashdot?
  • You haven't heard my ex-mother-in-law farting... and no you wouldn't want that as an headline :)
  • "They're also NOT red hot, glowing or smoking - they often feel cool to the touch immediately after impact. (The reasons are left as an exercise for the reader ;)"

    That's true!

    It is thought that the reason for this is the outer shell of the meteorite is heated very quickly and blown away ("ablated") as soon as molten material forms on the surface. The trip through earths atmosphere is very short and when it finally impacts the ground it retains most of it's original cryogenic temperature it naturally had in the cold vacuum of space.

    My guess is the core temperature would not be as cold as the ~3K CMBE of deep space because it would have to be in our solar system in order to impact earth in the first place(obviously)and the albedo of the average meteorite is not perfect (1.0), so each meteorite must reach a fairly cold equilibrium temperature based on the ratio of solar energy absorbance on the sun facing side to thermal emission on it's cold side.

    Sometimes when meteorites are found immediately after falling, they are covered in frost!

  • In other news... (Score:3)

    by Wrexen ( 151642 ) on Monday July 23, 2001 @08:19PM (#65939) Homepage
    President G.W. Bush announced a plan for the new "Meteor Wars" meteoroid defense plan, which would help protect Americans from malicious extra-terrestrial projectiles.

    "Although America does not cover a large portion of the Earth's surface, it is largest in its heart, and that is what we must protect" said the President last Monday, ignoring protestors yielding placards bearing the slogan "Outer space is mother nature too, let meteors live"

    The current design involves launching a pre-emptive nuclear missile into the upper atmosphere, detonating near the meteor and deflecting its path toward nations such as Canada or France.

    Colin Powell remarked about the new plan, "We feel we can obtain up to 95% accuracy in detonating these missiles above ground. The environmental consequences of the nuclear material will be minimal, as most detonations should talk place above Montana or North Dakota."
  • Don't forget that most of residents of the Northeast US and the West Coast as well are also "bum hick yokels". Deluded, elitist bum hick yokels who think they aren't but I ask you, would anyone who isn't a "bum hick yokel" actually watch Survivor? QED.
  • So would the m1 ¦Oe shield have protected us?

  • Baalke said the possible size of the meteor "depends on the composition of the meteor and the speed it was traveling. It could have been as small as a baseball " and would have been traveling between 100 mph and 200 mph.

    ..It would be tough to hit if it was 'as small as a baseball.. Of course it *could* have been as big as a compact car, but then again it *could* have been made of swiss cheese..

  • I am definitely from one of those "smaller towns" in PA. Trout Run is technically a village (by population) CNN is now running another story about the whole deal. Tis located here [cnn.com]. About 15 or so staff members at Camp Susque [susque.org] (the place where I work), saw it as well. (it freaked out the girls campers. :) I was lucky enough to witness the flash travelling for about 5 seconds. It left an incredible tail, even in broad daylight (the sun was still above the mountains and incredibly bright at the time...it was QUITE bright out right then) and was absolutely huge. Almost everyone else thought that it was only a hundred feet up in the air because of its size (which is ridiculous because it flew over some nearby mountains).

    About 4 minutes or so later. I have heard sonic booms before, when I was hiking and the area got buzzed by some kind of jet, and this was nothing like that. The initial sound was like a massive explosion, and it reverberated down the valley for a good ten seconds or so. It was headed northwest, but appearently a chunk of it hit about 15 miles from Trout Run in Northern Williamsport. The reports say that it scorched a cornfield, but there was no impact or craters. The local radio station claims to have many pictures of some actual impact sites from wellsboro, but I have been all over their site ( wksb.com [wksb.com] and I haven't found anything. If anyone has any pictures, please reply.

  • On TV, CNN had computer images showing the meteor's path and claimed that it was going south from Canada. However, even here it appeared to be going North West, and everyone I know thought it was going northwest. I put south from Canada, because generally CNN is more reliable than I am. I figure it appeared to be going northwest because of our location. Hence, I put down CNN's story. However, what I saw moved NORTHWEST. Sorry for the confusion.

  • Was it that a giant (1 km I think) asteroid passed between the earth and the moon and astronomers noticed it after it had passed? Scary.

    And then there's the CIA thinking a foreign country had detonated some nukes a few years ago, but it ends up they were just meteors/comets which had entered the atmosphere and did what they do best... vaporize and create one hell of a shockwave.

    Of course, there's the obligatory "you'll never be hit by a meteorite" statement too... remember, that friction is quite powerful. And incoming objects start heating up way past the "atmosphere" as most (uneducated) people know it. By the time incoming objects hit the dense atmosphere (still well above the surface) they get frickin' hot and vaporize.

    So for a meteor to actually hit you, it would have to be so large that it didn't vaporize completely. Let me tell you, if this meteor were to hit you, you should do two things. Buy a lottery ticket. Win a million billion dollars if you survive. Impacts of objects that size will leave very large craters and very dark, dark skies. Humans tend not to survive, but strange things have happened (like that flight attendant to fell 40,000 feet in the tail end of a plane and survived).

    Seriously, though, something the size of a car is going to make a nice show of lights and such, but you'd better hope it vaporizes very, very high in the atmosphere.
  • Remember the effects temperature can have on sound. If it had been 3 or 4 degrees warmer, the "sonic boom" might have sounded more like a "duck" or "Michael Jackson" A careful reader would have noted this.

    Also notice that the sonic boom seemed to go through the windows of their car. Had it been going through the transmission, now that would have been something.

  • Link to space.com story (Score:4)

    by jgaynor ( 205453 ) <jon.gaynor@org> on Monday July 23, 2001 @09:22PM (#65958) Homepage

    Light on any impact details, but here it is from the boys who know:

    http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsyste m/ meteor_eastcoast_010723.html

  • Not sure about the CIA indicate a few years back, but IIRC there was a story in the NY Times about how in March or April of this year, a meteorite exploded over the south Pacific with approximately the force of the atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima. Good thing it vaporized over the ocean and not over some major metro area...
  • CNN Washington Bureau Chief Frank Sesno was traveling in Pennsylvania and reported hearing "what sounded like a tremendous sonic boom" through the closed windows of his air conditioned 2001 Chevy Impala. Frank was also snacking on some trail mix at the time, and washing it back with some Lipton "Brisk" Iced Tea. Afterwards, Frank made a stop at the nearest rest area to "leak the lizard", in his own words.

  • HHGTG anyone ? (Score:3)

    by Merkins ( 224523 ) on Monday July 23, 2001 @09:47PM (#65967) Homepage
    Since experts had not predicted a meteor shower for Monday

    "Which is a shame really because that is exactly what it was designed for"

  • size of a baseball... (Score:3)

    by Agent Green ( 231202 ) on Monday July 23, 2001 @08:07PM (#65973)
    If something the size of a baseball could make a sonic boom after going only 100 or 200 MPH, I'm sure going to the ballgame would be a lot more fun.

    I wonder if they meant to says something more along the lines of 1,000 to 2,000 MPH...then there'd be a boom. Ya know, the size of basketballs or volkswagens. :)

    /* ---- */
    // Agent Green (Ian / IU7)
  • >thwackthwackthwack Well, if you're going to make an idiot of yourself, at least do it in front of 350,000 of your peers!

    >double thwack
    --
    "I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"

  • I picked up the album cos 'Go fuck yourself' was on a magazine coverdisk. Going totally off-topic, strange but true: promotional copies of music are usually exempted from publishing and recording deals - that is, the artists don't get a penny for them. Discuss [shotputt, javelin... ]
    --
    "I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
  • Looking on the bright side of making a tit of myself, it's good to see that Slashdotters pay attention to the numbers, rather than just nodding sagely, stroking theeir chins and murmering "Yes, yes, just as I suspected"...

    Alternatively: Ah, but these are *British* miles - not your wacky American ones - and of course I was thinking in metric.
    --
    "I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"

  • Re:Slow sound? (Score:4)

    by imipak ( 254310 ) on Tuesday July 24, 2001 @12:59AM (#65983) Journal
    >Meteors typically enter the atmosphere at 20-70 miles
    > per SECOND, not hour.
    Correct. > Terminal velocity doesn't really apply to meteors, the
    > meteor hits the ground or burns up long before it
    >can slow down enough to reach terminal velocity.

    Sorry, I'm afraid you are mistaken. It's true that the vast majority of objects entering the earth's atmosphere are vaporised long before reaching the ground - these are meteors, the familiar shooting stars. (You can normally see one or two meteors per hour on a good dark night.)

    Meteorites are objects sufficiently large that they don't completely vaporise. Instead, they become bolides - fireballs - as it sounds like this one did. It's pieces of these objects that end up in museums , labs or collectors. Contrary to popular belief, these *DO* hit the ground relatively slowly - plenty hard enough to kill you if it hit you, but no faster than if it had been dropped from an aeroplane. They're also NOT red hot, glowing or smoking - they often feel cool to the touch immediately after impact. (The reasons are left as an exercise for the reader ;)

    The things that leave dirty great holes in the ground, wipe out dinosaurs, etc, are way bigger, so big that they don't become fireballs before smacking into the earth. These *do* hit at 20, 30, 50 thousand miles per second.

    Good references for such matters:

    • http://medicine.wustl.edu/~kronkg/namn.html
    • http://www.meteoritecentral.com/
    • http://home.pi.net/~terkuile/meteors/dms.htm
    (some of these may be a bit broken, it's been a few years since I was an active meteor observer - Google for 'NAMN' and 'IMO' (Int'l Meteor Org. Oh, and MeteorObs mailing list.)
    --
    "I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"

  • Illegal aliens (Score:5)

    by MarsCtrl ( 255543 ) on Monday July 23, 2001 @09:08PM (#65984) Homepage Journal
    "At about 6:30 EST this evening, many meteors broke apart and headed south coming from Canada."

    Just another example on why we need tighter controls on our Canadian border. Keep the meteors in Canada, where they belong!
  • For the non-americans:

    100mph=160km/h=44m/s

  • "out my window what looked like a meteorite in a downward trajectory headed toward the Earth." - Do you know of any other sort of downward?

    "It was bright orange, and got brighter and brighter as it came down. Then about halfway up, it just sort of evaporated in a bright flash," My god man, learn to speak; halfway up from where/to where exactly?

    Quality reporting, from quality people; and he works for the Pentagon? Let's hope his fingers are away from important red buttons.

    "Quick launch the nuke about halfway up into the sky, in a sky-ward direction. Go Go Go !!!"

  • Wow. Anything that can travel less than 200 mph and still make sonic booms is worth a headline.

    Acutally, in the extreme upper atmosphere, the speed of sound is much slower (due to the lower pressure). I'm no expert, but I wouldn't doubt 200 mph would make a sonic boom.

    However, something makes me doubt the meteor was going only 200 mph when it hit the upper atmosphere. Up there in space, speeds are measured in miles per second.

  • My friends and I were having a spectacular battle when I decided to launch a meteor strike as the Lunar Corporation against one of them. The attack never came where I targeted... Spooky.
  • You are wrong. The only civilised place in the US is Minneapolis. It is well known to everyone here that people on the east coast are snobs, people on the west coast are wierdos, and everyone in between us and them is a bum hick yokel or a soccer mom.

    Except for Wisconsin, of course. Those cheeseheads aspire to become bum hick yokels.

    --

  • With apologies to HG Wells. . . (Score:5)

    by oldbox ( 415265 ) on Monday July 23, 2001 @08:34PM (#66005)
    And the deep, warm voice of Orson Wells:
    "And now, we bring you live to Grover Mills, just outside of Trenton, New Jersey . . . "

    radiobox

  • a bright flash and then... (Score:3)

    by siegesama ( 450116 ) on Monday July 23, 2001 @07:54PM (#66011) Homepage
    Too bad I missed it :(

    Hey, just be happy it missed you
  • The CNN article says "Baalke said the possible size of the meteor "depends on the composition of the meteor and the speed it was traveling. It could have been as small as a baseball " and would have been traveling between 100 mph and 200 mph."

    This sounds insanely wrong to me. I dont think any unpowered object travelling 100 - 200 mph could possibly fly across Canada and land in Pennsylvania.

    Have you ever heard of meteroids travelling at such rediculously low speeds? No chance of sonic booms.

    The huge crater in Arizona [barringercrater.com], for example, was thought to be made by a 85 foot diameter chunk of iron travelling 45,000 miles per hour.

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