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It's funny. Laugh. Space Science

Meteorite Bowling 51

Posted by timothy from the uh-yeah-this-is-uh-research dept.
La Camiseta writes "According to this article from the Guardian Unlimited Observer, some members of the Salt Lake Astronomical Society want to drop bowling balls from airplanes onto the Utah salt flats to simulate meteorites falling. Unfortunately, it's hit a few snags."
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Meteorite Bowling More

Meteorite Bowling

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  • Alternative funding: RIAA (Score:4, Funny)

    by TripleA ( 232889 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2003 @04:29PM (#5234462) Homepage
    They could be dropping Ipod's and other mp3 players instead. I guess that would recieve some attention... "First mp3 player in space bombs".
    Of course, it wouldn't really be in space. But who trusts newspaper headlines anyway?

  • Stupid! (Score:3, Funny)

    by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2003 @04:34PM (#5234521) Homepage
    Snags??? I suppose you mean the TOWN under the area they wanted to drop the balls on. Doh!
    • Snags??? I suppose you mean the TOWN under the area they wanted to drop the balls on. Doh!

      Well, that shouldn't be a problem... a 4,000 mile-per-hour bowling ball probably wouldn't have any problem plowing straight through any snags that got in the way.

  • They wanna drop what?! (Score:4, Funny)

    by dacarr ( 562277 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2003 @04:34PM (#5234525) Homepage Journal
    Look, if the winds at high altitudes can knock a 747 off course (which can be corrected), isn't it possible for those winds to knock a bowling ball or a shotput or a rock off course?

    On the other hand, I suppose if they get a little bit of english on the ball....

    • Re:They wanna drop what?! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by KDan ( 90353 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2003 @04:39PM (#5234578) Homepage
      Actually an airplane is *far* more likely to be blown off course by wind than a bowling ball, because unlike the bowling ball it's designed to be affected by "wind blowing" - otherwise it couldn't take advantage of the Bernoulli effect and lift off.

      A bowling ball, on the other hand, though it could maybe technically be affected by the bernoulli effect (ping pong balls are, after all...), has a much smaller surface area to weight ratio.

      Daniel
      • A bowling ball, on the other hand, though it could maybe technically be affected by the bernoulli effect (ping pong balls are, after all...), has a much smaller surface area to weight ratio.

        A bowling ball doesnt seem like all that great of a simulation, though i can see how it would be usefull. All the meteorites ive seen have had very irregular surfaces, wouldnt that affect the way it flies through the air? And think of all the complicated fluid dynamics stuff you would have to deal with if you wanted to simulate a meteorite that was melted during entry into the atmosphere.

      • Bernoulli not (Score:3, Informative)

        by MacAndrew ( 463832 )
        An object falling through wind shear accelerates up to the speed of the air mass, like a boat in a current. How quickly it does so depends on the object's mass and drag. A bowling ball is pretty dense (hard to accelerate) and low drag (hard to accelerate), and it won't even be in the air very long. Airplanes are mostly air, thus lots of cross section, so they pretty much instantly become part of the air movement. However, they also (hopefully) have more than enough thrust to pick their own heading.

        The big deal with the Norden bombsight [centennialofflight.gov] was its oversold ability to compensate for airspeed (the inital velocity and vector of the bomb) and wind speed/direction after the bomb was released. The same would be true of the bowling ball. I'd think the meteor would have a higher terminal velocity -- some of them are basically chunks of metal.

        Incidentally, the Bernoulli effect is only a percentage of a wing's lift. I figured out recently that the textbooks make this hard to understand by always depicting the airfoil at a zero angle of attack, at which few planes could stay aloft. Military jets and aerobatic planes and paper airplanes don't rely on it as much, and most planes can fly upside-down provided the gas and oil keep flowing....
    • On the other hand, I suppose if they get a little bit of english on the ball....

      ..they'd have to wipe it off. You have a very dirty mind!

  • I used to think that toilets on airplanes were like the toilets on train - open underneath.

    That would make for some interesting meteorites no?

    Daniel

  • Simulations Gone Awry (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jamuraa ( 3055 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2003 @04:35PM (#5234536) Homepage Journal
    I would think that these smart people would realize that simulating a meteorite impact would need something other than bowling balls. Doesn't the composition of such fast-moving objects make some difference in how they bounce? Last time I checked, meteors aren't made of bowling balls. Plus I can imagine why everyone in utah would want to be on the government's side on this. Sure, dropping things from planes is cool, but what if it lands on your wife. (Mabye that's why they have spares in utah)

    Sounds like a group of crackpots to me - not that there's anything wrong with crackpots mind you. There has to be someone around to go wild about free energy theories and such. Just wait until one of them is right. (Little do we know, many have already been right, but they've been carted off to the island)

  • They need to talk to someone with experience... (Score:3, Funny)

    by foistboinder ( 99286 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2003 @04:35PM (#5234538) Homepage Journal
    The should contact David Letterman - he has all sorts of experience with this sort of stuff.

  • INCOMMING!!!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by docbrown42 ( 535974 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2003 @04:44PM (#5234639) Homepage
    Duck and Cover!!!

  • It's been done (Score:3, Funny)

    by VikingBerserker ( 546589 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2003 @04:47PM (#5234675)

    'Released high in the atmosphere, the balls would reach the same velocity as a meteorite. Then we would discover if they bounced off, punched through or exploded,'

    I went to college with a guy who tried a similar experiment with a bowling ball and my dorm. Oddly enough, he was the one that was bounced.

  • Wiggins! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Ydna ( 32354 )
    'We're not stupid,' added Wiggins.

    All I could think of after reading the article was Chief Wiggins and Ralph dropping heavy things out of an airplane.

    "Dropping things is fun, huh daddy?"

    • Re:Wiggins! (Score:3, Informative)

      by cryptor3 ( 572787 )
      Yeah, I thought the same thing when I saw that. Of course his name is Wiggum, not Wiggins.

    • Wiggum* (Score:3, Funny)

      by cornjchob ( 514035 )
      You're reading /. and don't know how to spell the name of a Simpson's character? I hope you live in the part of Utah that will allow this to happen. :p
  • I got it!
    • Some time ago, a commercial appeared on tv here in Denmark. It was a man trying to load a bowling ball into his car, while parked on a fairly steep road. Of course the ball falls out, and rolls down the street. A man on the road signals that he 'got it' and when it comes he kicks it with all he's got... Of course the camera turns away so you don't see it, but every time you imagine how much it hurts to kick a BBall... It's followed by the punchline "need glasses?" or something and is promoting a national chain of opticians.
      I laughed my ass of first time I saw it. Still stings every time though, you just know that he hasn't got a non-fractured bone left in the foot!

  • hitting a few snags... (Score:4, Funny)

    by gnovos ( 447128 ) <gnovos.chipped@net> on Wednesday February 05, 2003 @05:20PM (#5235094) Homepage Journal
    some members of the Salt Lake Astronomical Society want to drop bowling balls from airplanes onto the Utah salt flats to simulate meteorites falling. Unfortunately, it's hit a few snags

    Well, that shouldn't be a problem... a 4,000 mile-per-hour bowling ball probably wouldn't have any problem plowing straight through any snags that got in the way.
    • Unfortunately, it's hit a few snags

      Well, that shouldn't be a problem... a 4,000 mile-per-hour bowling ball probably wouldn't have any problem plowing straight through any snags that got in the way.

      Oh, maybe they mean unfortunate for the snags....

  • Why the hell not? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 05, 2003 @05:39PM (#5235267)
    This is practical science and they'll get a real understanding of some physics out of it. As the article says, they're planning on dropping several objects, maybe even a real meteorite.

    It's a chance to for the practical study of impact physics and craters. Actually, the scientist in me wants to know what happens if they dropped a much larger rock or boulder (several tons) from a high-altitude plane. The energies involved would be much more interesting than the 20-lb objects they've been talking about.

    Of course they're going to take precautions and make sure that nobody gets killed by falling rocks - but the public gut reaction is often to treat such quirky experiments as acts of insanity or vandalism.

    On a lighter note, I'm actually suprised the military has never (to my knowledge?) investigated the "dropping rocks out of airplanes" destructive technology. :)
    • On a lighter note, I'm actually suprised the military has never (to my knowledge?) investigated the "dropping rocks out of airplanes" destructive technology. :)

      And what, exactly, do you think the "xyz pound gravity bombs" they used in Afghanistan are? Slightly more efficient than a rock, but the idea is the same.

  • What about shooting them? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Atomizer ( 25193 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2003 @06:23PM (#5235747)
    I'm not a phsyics expert, so this may be a stupid question...

    Couldn't you just fly a lot lower an shoot things, like maybe start with potatos [slashdot.org]?
    • Not likely because of the recoil: the same energy you appy to your bowling bowl going *down* will be applied to your aircraft going *up*. It is safer to climb higher and to drop the thing.

      If you shoot the thing at 300m/s (around mach 1 which is quite high for a bowling ball :), you'll get a kinetic energy of 1/2 m v^2. (where m=mass of the thing and v=300m/s).

      If you simply drop it, the gravitatioal potential energy is mgh (where m=mass of the thing , h=height and g=gravitational acceleration). Thus in order to get the same effect, you write .5mv^2=mgh , thus
      h=.5v^2/g which leads to h=4500m.

      The real computation is a bit more complicated since you add the resistance of the air, which is a function of both altitude (air pressure) and speed.

      BTW: am I the only one thinking of a 2-ounce squirrel carrying a 1 pound coconut ? :-D

  • Duh. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Bowling Moses ( 591924 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2003 @06:23PM (#5235753) Journal
    "...some members of the Salt Lake Astronomical Society want to drop bowling balls from airplanes..."

    Who doesn't?
  • Ok, things falling through an atmosphere hit a terminal velocity (depending on it's weight to wind resistance, etc.) as it falls....

    Calculate the altitude that a bowling ball will reach terminal velocity, add 100 ft. or so, then just launch it that high using a trebuchette (better than a PC), a rocket, or something like that. I would guess that it would only take 100-200 ft to reach terminal velocity anyway, so what do you need the airplane and the extra altitude for

  • Terminal Velocity (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lirkbald ( 119477 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2003 @07:49PM (#5236491)
    I found a terminal velocity calculator here [gsu.edu]. I don't feel like hunting up exact numbers, but it looks like a bowling ball isn't gonna manage much more than a few hundred miles an hour. Meteors start out going much faster than that.

    This "experiment" has no bearing the behavior of meteors. Sounds like these guys should go review basic physics before they propose dangerous experiments.

    • but they slow down (Score:3, Informative)

      by upper ( 373 )
      Small meteors slow down to terminal velocity as they fall. Big ones don't slow down that much. I'm pretty sure that bowling balls qualify as small for this purpose.
      • I'm pretty sure that bowling balls qualify as small for this purpose.

        Bowling balls are only "small" if you're above them looking down. LOL

        -
      • ALL meteors slow down, even big meteors. Friction is nasty. Even without this, the experiement will still be helpfull. So maybe we do not learn as much about the big meteors, we still would learn about the smaller ones. Yes, it may not tell us how to avoid killer meteors/comets/ what have you, but it will teach us more about the universe.

  • Well... (Score:4, Funny)

    by cornjchob ( 514035 ) <thisiswherejunkgoes@gmail.com> on Wednesday February 05, 2003 @08:15PM (#5236674)
    I guess dropping bowling balls from planes is right up the insane person's alley. Sometimes one just needs an open frame of mind to understand things of this magnitude. I don't see the problem here; I think these people would spare no expense to ensure these bowling balls wouldn't strike anyone.

    I'll bet the council that makes the decision will have a 7-10 split as to wether or not this should be allowed to happen. Those turkeys.

    Well just mod me -7 pun.
  • As Wiggins said: 'Everyone likes to drop things from planes.'

    God, I wish I had this guy's job.

  • Why don't they use hot air balloons or helicopters instead?

    Compared to planes it should be easier to find the stuff, plus you can do more controllable tests.

    • But you can get more bowling balls in the back of, say, a Hercules. I have this vision now of a Herkybird doing that insane shove-the-food-parcels-out-the-back manoeuvre - only with bowling balls. That's a whole lotta bowling balls.

      Science be damned, this is fun. Anyone sponsor me for a C-130 type rating? Anyone?

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