[meteorite-list] NP Article, 02-1896 The Madrid Aerolite

From: MARK BOSTICK <thebigcollector_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:23:46 2004
Message-ID: <OE51yKdw0bPur9gSRp900006691_at_hotmail.com>

Title: Fort Wayne Weekly Gazette
City: Fort Wayne, In
Date: Thursday, February 13, 1896
Page: 4

The Madrid Aerolite

     The tremendous explosion of an aerolite over the city of Madrid last
Monday has attracted world-wide attention. We have seen no notice as yet of
the fall of the fragments to the earth. It is almost beyond question that
such fragments will be found within a radius of not more than twenty-five to
forty miles of that city. Had it been in the night those fragments would
have been seen for some moments after the explosion and the course they were
pursuing and the probable region in which they would fall would have been
determined. It is not a proper use of the word to call it an explosion of
the aerolite. The shock of the concussion of a body moving, as these
meteors do, with a velocity of forty or fifty miles per second, with the
earth's atmosphere, is sufficient to cause the deafening noise and to break
even a solid mass of stone into fragments, just as a cake of ice or a pane
of glass would be broken by falling on a stone sidewalk.
     From the fact that the detonation was very loud we are not necessarily
to infer that the aerolite was of huge dimensions. The noise, and even the
size of the fragments might be related more directly to the velocity and
therefore the force of impact, than to the size of the body. There have
been cases where the aerolite was reduced almost to powder by the
concussion. If fragments are not soon found we may suspect that such has
been the case in this instance.
     The space through which the earth is now passing seems to be richer in
aerolites than almost any other part of our annual path. We reach another
such point in the early part of May. The great Iowa meteor fell on the 12th
of Febuary but its explosion (?) did not occur till it was nearer the earth.
The largest fragment of that meteor found weighed about ninety pounds. The
character of the February and the May meteorites is about the same; about 90
per cent. of stony matter and the remainder nickel and iron. The outward
resemblance is sometimes so strong that fragments of different meteorites
can scarcely be distinguished except by their labels.

Mark Note: I use (?) as a reference that I am unsure of the spelling of the
word preceeding. That is not a case in this article which does contain the
"(?)".
Received on Thu 06 Mar 2003 01:41:40 PM PST