[meteorite-list] Re: It's Justa Dog Gone Goof

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:52:09 2004
Message-ID: <200208082121.OAA20058_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

> I've written Monica
> to remove this reference from the epitome of a scientific tome but she's not
> responded. Unfortunately, the Cat of Mets reaches a far larger audience with
> much more impact than one feature appearing in a magazine from New Zealand.

Since the dog story has not been disproven, there is no reason to censor it.
Monica did the proper thing to leave the story in the Catalog.

> On the other hand, without fanfare, Ron Baalke and I were able to hammer out
> language about the topic that now appears on the website he administers for
> NASA. I would refer list-members to that for a conservative read.

Here's the text that the Kevin and I agreed to;

  A rain of 40 stones fell from the sky in 1911 near Nakhla in Egypt. The falls were
  preceded by an appearance of a cloud and detonations, frightening local residents.
  There is an eyewitness account that one of the fragments hit a dog.
  Efforts to substantiate the validity of the dog story almost a century later
  have been unsuccessful thus far, though the story hasn't been disproven either.

There is no doubt that the Nakhla meteorite fell. We have the meteorite fragments.
There were eyewitnesses of the fall in Nakhla and Denshal. There is no doubt
the farmer who witnessed the dog hit really did see the Nakhla fall.
The main problem was that was no apparent effort made to sustantiate the farmer's
eyewitness account in 1911. There were no followup interviews or discussions
with the farmer back then for clarification, or any attempts to look for a dog.
Now, trying to track down the story over 90 years later has
been very difficult. How do you prove or disprove a report, when all
of the witnesses are dead, and most of the physical evidence is lost or gone? That
has been the dilemma. The Nakhla meteorite may have hit a dog, or it may not
have. There is some hope though. The original account was reported in
an Arabic newspaper, and then mentioned in an English newspaper.
If the original Arabic newspaper is found, then additional details may be
uncovered. The farmer even provided a meteorite fragment, which is still not
accounted for today. The farmer gave very accurate descriptions of the Nakhla
meteorite and fall characteristics, despite the translation from Arabic, and
the meteorite flight path lines up with his location. All of this accurate
information give more credence to his witnessing the meteorite hitting the dog,
and there is no motive for him to fabricate the story.

So, we're in this limbo state, where the story haven't been proven or disproven.
While some people want to dismiss the story as a fanciful tale, I've
adopted a more open-minded view. There is some credence to the story, and
I'm more than willing to consider any new evidence supporting or refuting the
story either way.

Incidently, the farmer's report was the first report made of the Nakhla meteorite,
and had the farmer not reported the dog story, then the
Nakhla meteorite would have probably not been lost to science forever.
That alone is worth to keeping the dead dog alive.

Ron Baalke
Received on Thu 08 Aug 2002 05:21:02 PM PDT