[meteorite-list] British Study Attempts to Calculate Odds ofBeing Hit By a Meteorite

From: Darren Garrison <cynapse_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Jul 31 12:17:46 2006
Message-ID: <ha4sc2dc9nidaih5c1uk3qt52kvphrla2t_at_4ax.com>

On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 03:59:04 -0500, you wrote:

>Hi,
>
> I think that, by the indicated weights, they are referring to
>the mass of the object to reach the ground at speed. You will
>note that they say of the eight 25 pounders "if they landed," but
>the vast majority never would.

But meteortes in the 25 pound range have been recorded to land near people
before-- without killing everone within "the size of a backyard garden" (or
whatever the phrasing was) of them.

>I had no trouble getting a one-ton iron to the ground with
>an impact energy release of 2600 pounds of TNT, hitting
>at 500 mph. How close do you want to be to that? A 133
>acre circle means that you couldn't get further than about
>650 feet away from the center of the impact zone. There's

Some googling shows that 133 acres is 5793480.00 ft2. Since pie are square,
then that would mean the safe distance would be 1358 feet, giving a "kill zone"
diameter of 2716 feet. I admit that I don't have the math to back it up, it
just "seems" like a huge area for a piece of iron roughly on the same scale as
Steve Arnold's oriented Brenham to kill everything. Maybe if it hit solid rock
and shattered into sharpnel, but not if it hits soft ground.
Received on Mon 31 Jul 2006 10:59:32 AM PDT