[meteorite-list] Serious question?

From: chris sharp <casper_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:29:57 2004
Message-ID: <004301c37de8$893f7d70$a08addcb_at_ringtail>

----- Original Message -----
From: "S. Singletary" <jumper_at_MIT.EDU>
To: "chris sharp" <casper_at_cooloola.net>; "Charles R. Viau"
<cviau_at_beld.net>
Cc: <meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2003 9:23 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Serious question?


> At 08:55 PM 9/18/2003 +1000, chris sharp wrote:
> >The iron impactor disintegrated and spread iron all over the planet
in
> >a fallout cloud and created a layer of iron rich material on the
> >surface.
>
> My knee-jerk reaction to that is to think about the large iron
meteorites
> in our collections. They tend to be the most competent and coherent
and
> hence will hold together on impact. It doesn't seem likely to me
that an
> iron will disintegrate in the fashion you are talking about on
impact. I'm
> not sure of that, just my first reaction to the statement.
>

Good point. Perhaps it depends on the speed of impact. High cosmic
velocity, more chance of vapourisation.

 Small scale iron impacts can create large red ejecta blankets. Scale
it up a few orders of magnitude and I reckon you could turn the
surface of a planet red.

Go Spirit & Opportunity!

cheers from Australia

chris sharp
Received on Thu 18 Sep 2003 09:26:57 AM PDT