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Re: Cumbrian meteorite..?



>----------
>> From: STUARTATK@aol.com
>> To: davehostetter@linknet.net; meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com
>> Subject: Re: Cumbrian meteorite..?
>> Date: Thursday, July 16, 1998 10:21 AM
>> 
>> Hi Dave,
>> 
>> Thanks for your note re my intriguing "sighting" - (and to everyone
>reading
>> this who mailed me with advice and comments)...
>> 
>> I've been digging about and am now pretty convinced that my observer
>actually
>> saw the Bovedy meteorite falling, everything fits - the direction of
>flight,
>> brightness etc. The only thing nagging at me is his insistence that he
>heard
>> that hissing and sizzling..'. but we all know how easy it is for people
>who
>> witness only part of an event to read or listen to accounts of it
>containing
>> other information, and then convince themselves they saw or heard those
>things
>> too...

With regards to this phenomenon often reported with bright fireballs,
I once witnessed a bright green fireball while driving home from work.

Oddly, I heard a hissing, sizzling sound *before* I caught sight of the
fireball itself.   

A friend of mine that I worked with at Lowell Observatory saw the Great
Fireball of 1947, the one that Nininger reported in his notes.  My
friend was on a steel bridge when he heard the beams of it sizzling and
hissing, as if they were hot metal drenched in water.  He then caught
sight of the fireball while this sound was occurring.  As he as seeing
it from Farmington, NM it appeared in the west "floating" above the 
horizon.


These strange sounds may actually be some form of electromagnetic
radiation that is converted into "sound" by the brain, or perhaps
by metal objects near the observer.  Since fireballs are so transient,
it is difficult to set up the equipment to test theories behind it.

Maybe the next Leonid Storm might offer that to a researcher, as 
bright "sizzling" fireballs were reported in 1966.


Also, I would like to apologize for having used the term "fool" so 
recklessly in my last post.  I did not mean to imply that my good
friend to whom I was replying was that.  Poor choice of words--

Good thing I'm not a diplomat-- hate to think what would happen if I were.

Ka-BOOM !

:)

Steve Schoner.

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