[meteorite-list] Nakhla - What was turned to ash?

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:16:35 2004
Message-ID: <200308202242.PAA21613_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

>
>
> > One of them fell on a dog at Denshal, leaving it like ashes in the moment."
> >
> Why can't this be interpreted as the "meteorite" fracturing into many
> small fragments aka "ashes" as in a friable portion of what elsewhere
> sank up a meter into the ground?
>
> Why must this assume that the dog actually died? I've seen a .45 cal.
> bullet bounce off a dogs head.-- knocked him cold/wacky for a few
> minutes but he lived.

I express similar thoughts about 3 years ago:


The original story about the meteorite came from the
"Al Ahali" newspaper. I've confirmed that this newspaper is
written in Arabic. Some of the discrepancies could be explained
as translation errors from Arabic to English.

Now consider the words of the farmer, Mohammed Ali Effendi Hakim, who
claimed the meteorite hit the dog:

   "The fearful column which appeared in the sky at Denshal was
    substantial. The terrific noise it emitted was an explosion
    that made it erupt several fragments of volcanic materials.
    These curious fragments, falling to earth buried themselves
    into the sand to a depth of about one metre. One of them fell
    on a dog at Denshal, leaving it like ashes in the moment."

This does sound like an eyewitness account of a meteorite fall, though
the ash reference in the last sentence sounds odd. John Ball said that
this statement "is doubtless the product of a lively imagination".
Like everyone else, when I first read this quote from Mohammed Ali Effendi
Hakim, I also found the last sentence rather dubious. How can a dog go
to ashes in a moment from being hit by a meteorite? After giving it some
further thought, I realized the statement was not being interpreted
correctly. I think Mohammed Ali Effendi Hakim was describing the
fragmentation of a meteorite after it had hit a dog. In other words,
the meteorite, not the dog, was left "like ashes in the moment".
This made much more sense and is a more likely scenario.
Also, if this is the case, then the dog did not necessarily get killed
from being hit by the meteorite.

So, it is starting to look like the dead dog story may still be alive, or
rather it never died.
Received on Wed 20 Aug 2003 06:42:42 PM PDT