[meteorite-list] Carnacas smoke-trail photos

From: Darryl Pitt <darryl_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 21:37:23 -0400
Message-ID: <4B0304F8-AC8F-4B67-B0C4-949F12C6D09E_at_dof3.com>

you know....

what mike farmer has been up to the last few months is nothing short
of extraordinary.

what is happening before each of us right now is the meteorite lore
of the future.

as everyone who even glances at this list knows, i'm not blowing
smoke (trails) here. kudos must also go to his hunting pals, robert
ward and moritz karl , who i suspect help keep mike in motion.

astonishing. simply astonishing.





On Oct 2, 2007, at 8:59 PM, Michael Farmer wrote:


> Chris, it is a hell of a crater, at least 13 meters in
> diameter, more than one meter of uplift, looks
> identical to Meteor Crater to me, on a much smaller
> scale.
> There in fact does seem to be shocked material at the
> crater, I found only inside and just outside the
> crater, large pieces of compacted sandstone, yet there
> is no sandstone there, it seems to have solidified on
> the impact, everything else is more like soft mud.
> Large, and I mean larger pieces of sod, weighing at
> least 40 or 50 kilograms were thrown more than 50-100
> meters, and smaller dirt clod debris thrown up to 15o
> meters in all directions. This is a serious impact, I
> mean you can call it what you want, but with the
> uplift, the incredible debris field thrown to all
> sides, the huge size, and volume of the crater itself,
> certainly leads me to believe that the mass weighed
> many tons and is obviously in the hole under some
> meters of fallback debris. The locals report mushroom
> cloud lingered for more than a hour.
> As far as more pieces, this meterite came in over lake
> Titikaka, and if you have never seen this lake, it is
> HUGE! I would guess that as fragil as the meteorite
> is, that tons of debris fell off but would most likely
> have all fallen into the lake, or perhaps some on the
> mountains just inside of Bolivia. It is not populated
> there, and I assume from talking to most witnesses,
> that the large main mass, which was a massive ball of
> fire much larger and brighter than the Sun, caught
> everyones attention pretty well, and would be so
> bright that smaller pieces would be drowned out by the
> intensity of the main mass. That is what I think
> happened, surely many more pieces broke off but from
> where the main mass hit, back down the flightpath is
> nothing but swamps and high mountains for about 10
> miles, then 15 miles of lake. Perfect for most
> material to be lost.
> Michael Farmer
> --- Chris Peterson <clp at alumni.caltech.edu> wrote:
>
>
>
>> What remains to be determined is if this is actually
>> a crater, or just a
>> big splash. In the first case, some shocked material
>> should show up, and
>> I think it's likely that nothing is left in the
>> bottom. If there really
>> is a big meteorite at the bottom, then this probably
>> isn't a crater in
>> the usual sense (that is, produced by a large energy
>> release as the
>> parent body explodes/vaporizes).
>>
>> I don't believe I've seen anything credible to
>> suggest that the water
>> was actually boiling or steaming. It doesn't take
>> much energy to make a
>> hole this size in soft ground- probably around 100
>> kg TNT equivalent.
>> And that's not enough to heat up that much water
>> very much. So I expect
>> that any apparent bubbling was nothing more than an
>> effect of ground
>> water filling in the new hole.
>>
>> If the recovered material is shocked fragments, it
>> may be structurally
>> quite different from the parent body.
>>
>> Chris
>>
>> *****************************************
>> Chris L Peterson
>> Cloudbait Observatory
>> http://www.cloudbait.com
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Darren Garrison" <cynapse at charter.net>
>> To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
>> Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2007 5:37 PM
>> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Carnacas smoke-trail
>> photos
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> On Tue, 2 Oct 2007 15:54:57 -0700 (PDT), you
>>>
>>>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Is it indeed possible that a mass of say 3-7 tons
>>>> could cause such intense heat on impact? We think
>>>>
>>>>
>> that
>>
>>
>>>> the compression of the soil, in an instant to many
>>>> meteors deep could also cause intense heating.
>>>> Every person we interviewed decribed boiling
>>>>
>>>>
>> water,
>>
>>
>>>> lots of steam, and horrible sulfer type smell. The
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> What I wonder is if maybe the pressure/heat could
>>>
>>>
>> have caused
>>
>>
>>> dissolved gases to
>>> bubble out from the water? So it might not have
>>>
>>>
>> been at a boiling
>>
>>
>>> temperature,
>>> but still bubbling/steaming? Too bad we don't
>>>
>>>
>> have samples of the
>>
>>
>>> groundwater
>>> and soil from the area to see if there is anything
>>>
>>>
>> weird/extensively
>>
>>
>>> poluted
>>> about it.
>>>
>>> Also odd, of course, is a fraglie, porus stone as
>>>
>>>
>> you describe
>>
>>
>>> surviving to the
>>> ground big enough and fast enough to make the
>>>
>>>
>> crater.
>>
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>>
>>
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>
>
>>
>>
>>
>
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Received on Tue 02 Oct 2007 09:37:23 PM PDT


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