[meteorite-list] Holy crap-- can anyone confirm this? Any vikings on the list?

From: Bjorn Sorheim <astrogeo_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat Jun 10 12:40:36 2006
Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.2.20060610030750.040635d0_at_pop.online.no>

Hello List,
I think the information in this article is greatly exaggerated.
But the astronomer Mr. K.J. R?ed ?degaard is a bit to blame
for jumping to conclusions again it seems...

Another astronomer based much closer at The Northern Light
Observatorium in Troms?, Mr. Truls Lynne Hansen says to the same
newspaper (Aftenposten) that they there think it could be a stone of 10-12 kg!
And he says he strongly reacts to the comparison with an atomic bomb.
'"That's a great exaggeration", he says to the newspaper.

I think the story about it hitting a mountainside complete with picture
is very poorly backed up with facts.

Searching around in newspaper in this area (Troms) I also see now that
Mr. ?degaard is backing off this belief. ( in www.framtidinord.no).

It seems to me that a bright large meteor complete with light and sound
phenomena
seems a bit exotic take-on for both a big newspaper and a general astronomer.
Such phenomena needs a specialist, in my view...

Personally I cannot judge the size, to little exact information.
The sound phenomena is quite strong it seems. The story about curtains
blowing in is maybe hard to prove. Would like to see this confirmed by others.
Can one get a more precise value of the energy in the explosion deducing
from the seismic signal?

Bj?rn S?rheim,
in Norway
(I'm almost 2000 km from this location)




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<http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1346411.ece>http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1346411.ece


Record meteorite hit Norway
As Wednesday morning dawned, northern Norway was hit with an impact comparable
to the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima.

At around 2:05 a.m. on Wednesday, residents of the northern part of Troms and
the western areas of Finnmark could clearly see a ball of fire taking several
seconds to travel across the sky.

A few minutes later an impact could be heard and geophysics and seismology
research foundation NORSAR registered a powerful sound and seismic
disturbances
at 02:13.25 a.m. at their station in Karasjok.

Farmer Peter Bruvold was out on his farm in Lyngseidet with a camera
because his
mare Virika was about to foal for the first time.

"I saw a brilliant flash of light in the sky, and this became a light with a
tail of smoke," Bruvold told Aftenposten.no. He photographed the object and
then
continued to tend to his animals when he heard an enormous crash.

"I heard the bang seven minutes later. It sounded like when you set off a
solid
charge of dynamite a kilometer (0.62 miles) away," Bruvold said.

Astronomers were excited by the news.

"There were ground tremors, a house shook and a curtain was blown into the
house," Norway's best known astronomer Knut J?rgen R?ed ?degaard told
Aftenposten.no.

R?ed ?degaard said the meteorite was visible to an area of several hundred
kilometers despite the brightness of the midnight sunlit summer sky. The
meteorite hit a mountainside in Reisadalen in North Troms.

"This is simply exceptional. I cannot imagine that we have had such a powerful
meteorite impact in Norway in modern times. If the meteorite was as large
as it
seems to have been, we can compare it to the Hiroshima bomb. Of course the
meteorite is not radioactive, but in explosive force we may be able to compare
it to the (atomic) bomb," R?ed ?degaard said.

The astronomer believes the meteorite was a giant rock and probably the
largest
known to have struck Norway.

"The record was the Alta meteorite that landed in 1904. That one was 90 kilos
(198 lbs) but we think the meteorite that landed Wednesday was considerably
larger," R?ed ?degaard said, and urged members of the public who saw the
object
or may have found remnants to contact the Institute of Astrophysics.

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Received on Fri 09 Jun 2006 09:33:27 PM PDT