[meteorite-list] Discover magazine article

From: Kelly Webb <kelly_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:41:12 2004
Message-ID: <3A974807.9BE8BA42_at_bhil.com>

Hi, Rob,
    Like you, I sort of jumped up out my chair and fumed for a while
after reading that statement. I have seen the 500 per year figure given
in other sources, which is one reason I posted my method of calculating
falls, because 500 per year is a ridiculous figure.
    His methodology depends on establishing an accurate age for all the
finds in a given geographical area, thus determining the time span
covered by those finds, and working backwards to set a fall rate that
will account for that number of finds. This method of course cannot
detect how many meteorites are lost, eroded, degraded, destroyed,
unrecovered, deposited elsewhere, and so forth.
    So as a method of determining fall rate, it's worthless. What was
important about his work is that his measured ages show that the fall
rate is essentially constant over a long time span.
    However, it is essentially unfair to judge any scientific argument
by its paraphase in a popular journal. So, I started hunting for his
original article. It is not available on-line (too old). I have found a
library source for it but have not made the 60-mile trek to their
basement to xerox it so I can properly and responsibly attack that silly
500 per year figure.

Kelly Webb

"Matson, Robert" wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I'm assuming I'm not the only one that read the article about
> Philip Bland in the March issue of Discover magazine. One
> sentence on page 47 covers a subject near and dear to my
> heart:
>
> "His results provided the first hard evidence that meteorites
> were falling at a constant rate -- roughly 100 meteorites
> weighing more than 10 grams per 40 million square miles per
> year -- over the last 50,000 years."
>
> Could this be a typo? This corresponds to a global fall rate
> of only ~500 meteorites per year! The actual rate has to be
> at least 300 times greater than this. --Rob
>
Received on Sat 24 Feb 2001 12:35:04 AM PST