[meteorite-list] Vitim Meteorite Was Probably A Comet

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:21:08 2004
Message-ID: <200307251917.MAA05072_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://en.rian.ru/rian/index.cfm?prd_id=160&msg_id=3345630&startrow=1&date=2003-07-25&do_alert=0

VITIM METEORITE WAS PROBABLY A COMET
Russian Information Agency Novosti
July 25, 2003

MOSCOW - Russian scientists who have investigated the place where the so-called
Vitim meteorite fell presume that what hit the taiga was a small comet. The
object concerned was a large celestial body with a supposed weight of about 100
tons, which at the end of September of last year fell into the basin of the
Vitim River in Eastern Siberia. Witnesses claim that they saw a glowing object
hurtle through the air and break up into small pieces and then heard a powerful
explosion. A fire started in the place of the fall, within a radius of 3
kilometres. Because these localities are hard to reach, the investigators did
not arrive there until this summer.

Members of the Russian expedition said they failed to discover metal remnants
in the place of the fall. Besides, the character of damage and the radiation
background at the explosion epicentre are substantially different from the
aftereffects of the fall of a meteorite, believe the scientists. The meteorite
version is also disproved by the fact that edges of meteorites are usually fused,
and fragments of the celestial body have a dense metallic structure. The
fragments found by the scientists resemble sandstone and "crumble in hands",
one of the expedition participants Vadim Chernobrov, head of the Kosmopoisk
research association, told RIA Novosti.

According to him, some data, however, fail to confirm the comet theory. "The
local water was found to contain tritium, a special kind of radioactive hydrogen,
and that is rather strange for comets," thinks Chernobrov.

Although near midnight on September 24, 2002, the flying object above Eastern
Siberia was registered, according to the US Defence Department, by an American
military satellite, members of the Russian expedition do not rule out
that they deal with a rare natural phenomenon - a giant ball lightning or an
ejection of special subterranean minerals that disintegrate into water and gas.
Final conclusions will be made later. The investigations on the site of the
blast are continuing.

As estimated by specialists, it was an explosion of such a force that if the
supposed fire-ball had fallen on Moscow, half of the Russian capital would have
turned into desert, a nd the other half into ruins.
Received on Fri 25 Jul 2003 03:17:47 PM PDT