[meteorite-list] Publications of the Carancas event ADDITIONAL

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 17:00:31 -0500
Message-ID: <147d01c80abf$d0a625c0$b92ee146_at_ATARIENGINE>

Hi,

    After reading through those other documents
on the Major University of San Andres website
and concluding that they contained nothing we
didn't already know, I realized I hadn't read the
footnotes in the one article that had footnotes,
and indeed I found one new piece of information
in those footnotes: one local inhabitant of Carancas,
Don Gregorio Iruri, was standing only 300 meters
from the point of impact at the time of the impact.

    That's all, a one-sentence footnote. It astounds
me that an "investigator," scientific or otherwise,
had located an eye-witness to as rare an event as
a cosmic impact but did not ask questions nor collect
his story! What did it look like? What did it sound
like? Was there a flash of light? How bright was it?
How strong was the shock wave? How strong was
the wind from the blast? Was he knocked down?
Rolled over? Or did he stay on his feet? Was he
deafened, even slightly? And about 1000 other
questions...

    The closest living witness to a cosmic impact
among the planet's 6.6 billion people and no one
asked him to describe it? Makes me wonder how
justified the second term of the biological name
"Homo sapiens" is. Maybe we should all just stand
around dumbly like cows. Oh, wait! -- we do.

    [In all fairness, the witness may have been so
shaken as to not have had a coherent story, but even
that fact is useful information. They say in reference
to Don Iruri only this: "...podemos concluir que esa
estructura tiene la t?pica caracter?stica de un cr?ter
explosivo." Or, "...we were able to conclude that
this structure has the typical characteristics of an
explosive crater." So he must have described an
explosion. Details would be nice.]

    Close witness information would probably make
it possible to determine the magnitude of the blast
within closer limits than at present. The Peruvian
seismic measurement was 5 tons TNT. Chris Peterson
has suggested airblast effects exaggerate ground
readings and that 1 to 2 tons TNT is more reasonable.
Now, Brown suggests 30 tons TNT as a measurement.
It's possible Don Iruri's story could narrow that down...
if anybody had asked him.

    The LPI Impact Calculator uses the figure of an
overpressure of 1 pound per sq. inch as a nominally
perceptible blast force (about equal to an instantaneous
gust of 35 mph wind). I tried using the equations from:
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/fae.htm
for air-fuel explosions, an event quite similar to an
impact vaporization. [We are considering only pressure
effects, not flying debris nor any other possible results.]

    The results are that one finds the distance at which
one would experience an overpressure of 1 pound
per sq. inch from a one ton TNT explosion is 158
meters, from a 5 ton event is 270 meters, but from
a 30 ton event is 490 meters and from a one kiloton
event is 1500 meters. [Caveat: every actual blast is
different, affected by surface materials, reflected
waves, and a long list of modifiers, including the
unknown efficiency of kinetic energy conversion
in this impact, so these estimates above have a
potential 2-fold error in distance.]


Sterling K. Webb
----------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "K. Ohtsuka" <ohtsuka at jb3.so-net.ne.jp>
To: "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
Cc: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2007 7:15 AM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Publications of the Carancas event ADDITIONAL


Hello Sterling,

Thank you for letting me know your translation of
the Bolivian publications, which is very interesting.

Just before, I visited http://spaceweather.com/,
where another latest infrasound analysis of the
Peruvian event by Peter Brown (Univ. W. Ontario)
is introduced. His team estimated the kinetic energy
of the impactor about 0.03 kton TNT.

Best wishes,

Kastu

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Cc: "Rob Matson" <mojave_meteorites at cox.net>; "K. Ohtsuka"
<ohtsuka at jb3.so-net.ne.jp>
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2007 9:14 AM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Publications of the Carancas event ADDITIONAL


> Hi,
>
> I downloaded all the publications on the site (URL below) and
> started translating then, but...
>
> One is the earlier analysis which I already translated and posted
> a week ago. The two PowerPoint presentations are general
> presentations of craters (very nicely done, BTW -- muy bueno!)
> but don't mention Carancas. One is a press-release style .pdf
> that describes the event and spends a lot of time explaining
> what a meteorite is, that they come from the asteroids, that there
> are craters elsewhere on the planet, that the world is not ending,
> the usual...
>
> There are a few more .pdf are press releases. The only document
> with any "specifics" is their physical estimates of the impact and
> such, all taken from playing with the LPI online Impact Calculator;
> I recognize the language! Like I haven't already done that 300 times
> this last week (and you too).
>
> And if you're keeping score, the Bolivians (unlike the Peruvians)
> got the Universal Time of the event right.
>
>
> Sterling K. Webb
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "K. Ohtsuka" <ohtsuka at jb3.so-net.ne.jp>
> To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Sent: Monday, October 08, 2007 9:37 AM
> Subject: [meteorite-list] Publications of the Carancas event
>
>
> Hello list members,
>
> I have just reached the Carancas' publication list site in Peru:
>
> http://fcpn.umsa.bo/fcpn/app?service=page/Planetarium_PublicationList
>
> where some articles have already been introduced by some list members,
> but the rest ones are not introduced yet and seem indeed interesting,
> although
> I cannot understand Spanish at all.
>
> Does anyone translate and introduce their summary?
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Katsu OHTSUKA
> Tokyo, JAPAN
>
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>
>
Received on Tue 09 Oct 2007 06:00:31 PM PDT