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

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat Jun 10 12:44:09 2006
Message-ID: <000c01c68c4c$ee853bf0$454ce146_at_ATARIENGINE>

Hi,

    Never one to resist Olympic-level Conclusion Jumping
(I medalled), within 30 seconds of reading your post (and
Ron Ballke's), I note:

    The date: June 7
    Compare to Tunguska in date and lattitude
    In the calendar window of the betaTaurids meteor stream
    BetaTaurids are daylight fireballs (it was "daylight" there)
    Check sky over Norway (rough radiant on E horizon;
        anti-radiant on W horizon; they come both ways.)
    Check map of Norway: Finnmark northern-most county,
        lies west of north Troms county (Tromso contains
        one-third of Norway's population; way north.)
    Sounds as if fireball went west to east if seen in Finnmark
        then impacted in Troms. (Tunguska went west to east.)
    Fiddled with Melosh's on-line impact calculator, maybe
        a five foot iron or a ten-foot rock, tops, or less, but
        much less and it would never have made it to impact.
        Bigger than ten feet if less dense rock, but more likely
        to fragment. Could have started out as much bigger
        rock that did fragment.
    No doubt an utterly impossible place to look for any
        meteoritic fragments -- Artic Norway; the mountains
        are less than 1000 meters, but old glaciated terrain,
        The Reisadalen is river valley that runs from 69 deg N.
        to 69 deg 44' N between 21 E and 22 E., in case you're
        looking for it. Google Earth view is very unrevealing in,
        details, except you can get a good idea of the terrain by
        tilting the view.

    It's a national park with a website:
http://english.dirnat.no/wbch3.exe?p=3050

    Check out the county in the Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troms
    I quote:
    Reisadalen ([5]) is one of the most idyllic river valleys
in Norway; from Storslett in Nordreisa the valley stretches
south-southeast, covered with birch, pine, grey alder,
and willow. The northern part of the valley is 5 km wide,
with 1000 m high mountains on both sides; the southern
part of the valley narrows to a few houndred meters
(canyon), with increasingly dry climate. The valley
floor is fairly flat with little height difference for 70 km
(to Bilto); the Reisa river can be traveled by canoe or
river boat for much of this distance. The salmon swims
90 km up the river, and some 137 different species of
birds have been observed. Several rivers cascades
down into the valley; the Mollisfossen waterfall is
269 m ([6], [7]). The valley ends 120 km southeast
of Storslett, as the vast and more barren
Finnmarsvidda plateu takes over. Reisa National Park ([8])
protects the upper part of the valley.

    If Mike Farmer is already on a plane, it'll make a great
vacation, but it doesn't sound like a great place to scratch
for meteorites...

    I hope somebody can come up with a track recontruction
for this thing and the seisomologists with an accurate impact
energy.


Sterling K. Webb
----------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Darren Garrison" <cynapse_at_charter.net>
To: <Meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Friday, June 09, 2006 9:43 AM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Holy crap-- can anyone confirm this? Any vikingson
the list?


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 Sat 10 Jun 2006 01:15:46 AM PDT