[meteorite-list] New, long, Carancas article

From: Jerry <grf2_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2008 19:28:00 -0400
Message-ID: <D36929A84D3C4B15AA84BCEC87CC3D08_at_Notebook>

Ahh Soo.
Jerry Flaherty
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Cc: "Sean T. Murray" <stm at bellsouth.net>; "Gerald Flaherty"
<grf2 at verizon.net>
Sent: Friday, April 04, 2008 6:30 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] New, long, Carancas article


> Hi, Jerry, Sean, List,
>
> The C-sub-d (Coefficient of Drag) of the classic
> Volkswagen Beetle is 0.48 to 0.49, which today would
> be considered very high indeed, unacceptably so. Of
> course, in those days most cars were aerodynamically
> the equivalent of a barn door.
>
> The original Taurus of 1986 had a then-revolutionary
> Drag Coefficient of 0.27. Even today, that is very slick
> (the most aerodynamic cars of today range from 0.26
> to 0.30).
>
> Apparently more aerodynamic, VW Beetle Generation
> Two, today's Beetle, is not aerodynamic at all, with a
> C-sub-d of 0.38, one of the least aerodynamic cars you
> can buy, a gas-hog and dangerously twitchy at speed. A
> simple slab of plywood tacked onto its ass will reduce drag
> to 0.28, improve gas mileage, and make it safer to drive:
> http://www.max-mpg.com/html/tech/main.htm
>
> The original Taurus styling was the exact opposite of
> the universal styling of the 1980's, which was essentially
> rectangular boxes. Taurus style was referred to as "Jelly
> Bean" styling and other US auto makers despised it, even
> as their sales slipped away. A GM VP was widely quoted
> as saying that GM would not change their styling "just
> because that's what the consumer wants."
>
> A Taurus re-style in 1992 to a more rectangular style
> degraded the aerodynamics, but the next re-style of 1996
> was more aerodynamic (and jelly-bean-like) than the 1986
> original. The current Taurus models are about 0.29 drag.
>
>
> Sterling K. Webb
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jerry" <grf2 at verizon.net>
> To: "Sean T. Murray" <stm at bellsouth.net>;
> <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Sent: Friday, April 04, 2008 4:11 PM
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] New, long, Carancas article
>
>
> True, rather poor choice. I'm just quoting.
> Jerry Flaherty
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Sean T. Murray" <stm at bellsouth.net>
> To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Sent: Friday, April 04, 2008 4:52 PM
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] New, long, Carancas article
>
>
>> So... a Ford Taurus is an example of a vehicle with miminal friction?
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Jerry" <grf2 at verizon.net>
>> To: <cynapse at charter.net>; <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
>> Cc: <meteoriteguy at yahoo.com>
>> Sent: Friday, April 04, 2008 3:39 PM
>> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] New, long, Carancas article
>>
>>
>>> "It's like having a Volkswagen turn into a Ford Taurus," Schultz said,
>>> adding
>>> that this sort of reshaping is well known to geologists who study
>>> islands
>>> and
>>> land-water interaction. "If you put a big pile of dirt in a stream, that
>>> mound
>>> will eventually turn into a teardrop shape. It's trying to minimize the
>>> friction."
>>> Just wht Sterlng has been proposing for the last few months.
>>> Jerry Flaherty
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Darren Garrison" <cynapse at charter.net>
>>> To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
>>> Cc: <meteoriteguy at yahoo.com>
>>> Sent: Friday, April 04, 2008 12:25 PM
>>> Subject: [meteorite-list] New, long, Carancas article
>>>
>>>
>>>> Hey, Mike, did you know that you and your team of poachers recovered 10
>>>> kilos of
>>>> Carancas?
>>>>
>>>> http://media.www.browndailyherald.com/media/storage/paper472/news/2008/04/04/Features/Professor.Solves.A.Meteor.Mystery-3304236.shtml
>>>>
>>>> Professor solves a meteor mystery
>>>> By: Chaz Firestone
>>>> Posted: 4/4/08
>>>> Last September, something strange landed near the rural Peruvian
>>>> village
>>>> of
>>>> Carancas. Two months later, so did Peter Schultz.
>>>>
>>>> One was an extraterrestrial fireball that struck the Earth at 10,000
>>>> miles per
>>>> hour, formed a bubbling crater nearly 50 feet wide and afflicted local
>>>> villagers
>>>> and livestock with a mysterious illness. The other is the Brown
>>>> geologist who
>>>> may have figured out why.
>>>>
>>>> The fiery mass shot across the morning sky bursting and crackling like
>>>> fireworks, villagers said after the Sept. 15 impact. An explosive crash
>>>> tossed
>>>> nearby locals to the ground, shattered windows one kilometer away and
>>>> kicked up
>>>> a massive dust cloud, covering one man from head to toe in a fine white
>>>> powder.
>>>> Many thought the streaking fireball - brighter than the sun, by some
>>>> accounts -
>>>> was an aerial attack from neighboring Chile.
>>>>
>>>> Curious shepherds and farmers approached the crash site to find a
>>>> smoking crater
>>>> reminiscent of a Hollywood film, laden with rocks and stirring with
>>>> bubbling
>>>> water that emitted a foul vapor. But curiosity turned to fear when
>>>> unexplained
>>>> symptoms began to crop up in Carancas: headaches, vomiting and skin
>>>> lesions
>>>> struck more than 150 villagers, Peru's Ministry of Health stated days
>>>> later.
>>>> Locals reported that their animals lost their appetites and bled from
>>>> their
>>>> noses. Children were restless and cried through the night.
>>>>
>>>> But according to Schultz, the professor of geological sciences who
>>>> visited the
>>>> site last December, the true mystery in Carancas is how any of this
>>>> happened in
>>>> the first place.
>>>>
>>>> Sophisticated theory and conventional wisdom have long agreed that most
>>>> meteors
>>>> break into fragments and fizzle out before they can reach the Earth's
>>>> surface.
>>>> Even those large and durable enough to make it through the atmosphere
>>>> hit the
>>>> ground as ghosts of their former selves, "plopping out of the sky and
>>>> forming a
>>>> bullet hole in the Earth," Schultz said. "This meteor crashed into the
>>>> Earth at
>>>> three kilometers per second, exploded and buried itself into the
>>>> ground."
>>>>
>>>> Last month, Schultz delivered a highly anticipated lecture at the 39th
>>>> Lunar and
>>>> Planetary Science Conference in League City, Texas. And if he's right,
>>>> the bold
>>>> theory he proposed there may shake loose a "gut response" entrenched
>>>> within the
>>>> geological, physical and astronomical sciences: "Carancas simply should
>>>> not have
>>>> happened."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> A Web of speculation
>>>>
>>>> The handful of shepherds who happened to lead their Alpaca herds near
>>>> the arroyo
>>>> that day may have been the first humans ever to witness an explosive
>>>> meteor
>>>> impact. But the rest of the world quickly got its chance, if
>>>> vicariously,
>>>> through a flurry of activity in the blogosphere.
>>>>
>>>> Hundreds of scientists, journalists and captivated amateurs weighed in
>>>> on the
>>>> bizarre events as they unfolded, offering scores of pet theories and
>>>> radically
>>>> revising them as more information streamed in from Peru.
>>>>
>>>> Pravda, a Russian online newspaper born out of a print version run by
>>>> the
>>>> country's former Communist Party, ran the headline "American spy
>>>> satellite
>>>> downed in Peru as U.S. nuclear attack on Iran thwarted" five days after
>>>> the
>>>> impact. The story attributes the villagers' illness to radiation
>>>> poisoning from
>>>> the satellite's plutonium power generator.
>>>>
>>>> Other proposed explanations were less sensational. Nevadan wildlife
>>>> biologist
>>>> and amateur geologist David Syzdek wrote a Sept. 18 blog post titled
>>>> "Meteorite
>>>> strike in Peru gassing villagers? Maybe not." In it, he proposed that a
>>>> mud
>>>> volcano producing toxic gases was responsible for both the illness and
>>>> the
>>>> crater.
>>>>
>>>> "The Andes are very active geologically so I think there is a good
>>>> possibility
>>>> that this crater was caused by an outburst of geothermal activity," he
>>>> wrote.
>>>>
>>>> As for the blinding light shooting across the sky, Syzdek chalked it up
>>>> to
>>>> coincidence.
>>>>
>>>> "Fireballs are quite common," he wrote. "One possible scenario is that
>>>> the
>>>> people who saw the fireball just happened on a recently formed mud
>>>> volcano while
>>>> they were out looking for the fireball impact site."
>>>>
>>>> Though Pravda and Syzdek drew radically different conclusions from the
>>>> reports,
>>>> what they shared with each other, many bloggers and even some
>>>> scientists
>>>> was a
>>>> healthy skepticism about reports coming out of Peru. Pravda and Syzdek
>>>> both
>>>> pointed out in their posts that an explosion powerful enough to create
>>>> such a
>>>> large crater would be equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT, or a tactical
>>>> nuclear
>>>> strike.
>>>>
>>>> "When I first saw the news reports, they just didn't seem right,"
>>>> Syzdek
>>>> later
>>>> said in an interview. "Explosive impacts like this just don't happen."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 'A hyperspeed curveball'
>>>>
>>>> Gonzalo Tancredi, a Uruguayan astronomer who collaborated with Schultz
>>>> in
>>>> Carancas, said initial reports of the impact confounded amateurs and
>>>> Ph.D.s
>>>> alike. Bewildered scientists even entertained the possibility of a hoax
>>>> as
>>>> rumors floated around the scientific community.
>>>>
>>>> "At the beginning, there were some doubts about what really happened
>>>> there,"
>>>> Tancredi said. "We thought maybe it was a meteor fall or maybe it was
>>>> something
>>>> else, even something fake."
>>>>
>>>> But when Tancredi visited Carancas a few weeks later, what he observed
>>>> silenced
>>>> the conspiracies and pointed unequivocally to one conclusion.
>>>>
>>>> Tancredi interviewed locals, who reported a large mushroom cloud that
>>>> formed
>>>> over the crater and compression waves that knocked villagers to the
>>>> ground. He
>>>> also found pieces of soil and rock that had been launched over three
>>>> football
>>>> fields from the crater - one piece even pierced the roof of a barn 100
>>>> meters
>>>> away. Combined with analyses of infrasound detectors and the patterns
>>>> of
>>>> crater
>>>> "ejecta," the evidence pointed to a genuine and very powerful meteorite
>>>> impact.
>>>>
>>>> But the question that remained on everyone's mind was how the meteor
>>>> got
>>>> there
>>>> at all - a scientific riddle that was made even more challenging by
>>>> Michael
>>>> Farmer.
>>>>
>>>> Farmer is a controversial figure in the geological community. He is a
>>>> meteorite
>>>> hunter, a poacher of alien rocks who travels to impact sites around the
>>>> world -
>>>> usually the "bullet hole in the Earth" type mentioned by Schultz - and
>>>> collects
>>>> whatever he can find, often brushing up against authorities and other
>>>> hunters.
>>>> Meteorite hunting is Farmer's full-time job; he profits from selling
>>>> what he
>>>> finds.
>>>>
>>>> Farmer, who said he is "totally self-taught" when it comes to meteors,
>>>> said he
>>>> was as skeptical as the rest when he first heard the reports coming out
>>>> of Peru
>>>> while on hunt in Spain. But 16 days later, he and his partners found
>>>> themselves
>>>> staring into the Carancas impact crater, the first Americans on the
>>>> scene - and
>>>> they stumbled on an extraterrestrial gold mine.
>>>>
>>>> "We got there and just started picking up pieces off the ground,"
>>>> Farmer
>>>> said.
>>>> "The entire ground was white, just white powder which was all meteor."
>>>>
>>>> Farmer and his team eventually accumulated 10 kilograms of small
>>>> meteorite
>>>> fragments and sold them to private collectors and universities for an
>>>> astronomical $100 per gram.
>>>>
>>>> But despite his rocky past with the geological community, Farmer and
>>>> his
>>>> expensive fragments made a priceless contribution to scientists. Within
>>>> minutes
>>>> of arriving on the scene, Farmer discovered that the Carancas meteorite
>>>> was a
>>>> chondrite, or stony meteorite, as opposed to an iron meteorite.
>>>>
>>>> Though far more common than iron meteorites, chondrites are highly
>>>> vulnerable to
>>>> ablation - the cracking, eroding and even exploding that occurs when a
>>>> meteor
>>>> enters the atmosphere and undergoes extreme changes in temperature and
>>>> pressure.
>>>> As a result, chondrites are far less likely than the more durable iron
>>>> meteorites to make it to the Earth's surface in large pieces - which
>>>> makes the
>>>> Carancas meteorite all the more baffling.
>>>>
>>>> "For a while, the only information we were getting was from Farmer's
>>>> Web
>>>> site,"
>>>> Schultz said. "This was not the type of object you'd expect to get
>>>> through the
>>>> atmosphere in a tight clump."
>>>>
>>>> With most pieces of the geological puzzle on the table, the stage was
>>>> set for
>>>> Schultz to visit the site for himself. But when he arrived there in
>>>> December
>>>> with a Brown graduate student, Tancredi and Peruvian astrophysicist
>>>> Jose
>>>> Ishitsuka, a budding geologist actually made the crucial discovery.
>>>> Scott Harris
>>>> GS said he collected some soil samples "initially out of curiosity" to
>>>> look for
>>>> evidence of shock deformation, which occurs when an object rapidly
>>>> decelerates
>>>> in cases like impacts or explosions. When Harris looked at the material
>>>> under a
>>>> microscope, he found tiny mineral grains that had turned into glass
>>>> because of
>>>> heat and massive shock forces, indicating a very high-speed impact.
>>>> Here
>>>> was yet
>>>> another mystifying piece of evidence.
>>>>
>>>> "At the minimum," Harris said, "this would support a velocity of three
>>>> kilometers per second - a real high-velocity explosion instead of just
>>>> a
>>>> plop in
>>>> the ground."
>>>>
>>>> By this time, more reputable scientific theories of the impact had
>>>> supplanted
>>>> the initial speculation, the most popular of which came from a group in
>>>> Germany
>>>> and Russia. They proposed that the meteor entered the Earth's
>>>> atmosphere
>>>> at a
>>>> very shallow angle, allowing it to reach the surface gradually and
>>>> avoid
>>>> a
>>>> sudden increase in pressure - "the difference between diving in and
>>>> doing a
>>>> belly flop," Schultz said.
>>>>
>>>> But their theory's relatively low impact velocity of 180 meters per
>>>> second, or
>>>> about 400 miles per hour, was consistent with every piece of evidence
>>>> but
>>>> Harris', which pointed to a velocity of about 10,000 miles per hour at
>>>> impact.
>>>>
>>>> "This was nature's way of throwing us a curveball," Schultz said. "A
>>>> hyperspeed
>>>> curveball."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Changing shape, changing theory
>>>>
>>>> Back home in Providence, Schultz was now faced with the task of fitting
>>>> the
>>>> puzzle pieces together into a cohesive theory. And to do it, he looked
>>>> to
>>>> Earth's closest planetary neighbor, Venus.
>>>>
>>>> "Our models make predictions about what kind of objects can make it to
>>>> the
>>>> surface at what velocity, and the Carancas meteor isn't usually one of
>>>> them,"
>>>> Schultz said. "But Venus has a much denser atmosphere and we still find
>>>> craters
>>>> on its surface. How did they get there? I think it might be the same
>>>> thing
>>>> here."
>>>>
>>>> To explain the alternative theory he developed, Schultz compared a
>>>> typical
>>>> meteor's descent to a waterskier behind a boat.
>>>>
>>>> "Normally when you're on the outside of the wake, you're pushed out
>>>> further,"
>>>> Schultz said. "From my experience looking at Venus, I realized that
>>>> there was a
>>>> certain condition where the waterskier will stay inside the wake, and
>>>> actually
>>>> get pushed inward."
>>>>
>>>> At last month's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, Schultz
>>>> proposed
>>>> that
>>>> the meteor did break up into pieces, but shock waves created by the
>>>> speeding
>>>> mass may have kept them close together. And since the meteor descended
>>>> as a
>>>> clump of fragments instead of one large piece, it reshaped itself along
>>>> the way
>>>> to become more aerodynamic, like a football or a javelin cutting
>>>> through
>>>> the air
>>>> instead of a poorly shaped hunk of rock.
>>>>
>>>> "It's like having a Volkswagen turn into a Ford Taurus," Schultz said,
>>>> adding
>>>> that this sort of reshaping is well known to geologists who study
>>>> islands and
>>>> land-water interaction. "If you put a big pile of dirt in a stream,
>>>> that
>>>> mound
>>>> will eventually turn into a teardrop shape. It's trying to minimize the
>>>> friction."
>>>>
>>>> Tancredi, who co-authored the paper with Schultz, Harris and Ishitsuka,
>>>> said
>>>> Schultz's theory is gaining popularity but is still being debated, even
>>>> among
>>>> the group that proposed it.
>>>>
>>>> "This is the hot question right now," he said. "We still have to
>>>> demonstrate
>>>> that this phenomenon is possible."
>>>>
>>>> In the meantime, another hot question had remained without a definitive
>>>> answer -
>>>> the etiology of the strange illness that afflicted the people of
>>>> Carancas. But
>>>> the group may solve that mystery, too.
>>>>
>>>> Schultz, Harris and Tancredi all dismissed the possibility of the
>>>> meteorite
>>>> emitting harmful gases that would sicken villagers. Instead, they
>>>> proposed a
>>>> simpler cause: the power of the mind.
>>>>
>>>> The meteorite impact sent out a powerful compression wave that knocked
>>>> nearby
>>>> villagers and animals to the ground and injected the soil with air,
>>>> which later
>>>> bubbled up through the crater. Shepherds and cattle may also have
>>>> breathed in
>>>> the thick dust thrown up by the crash and smelled the sulfurous gases
>>>> produced
>>>> as water reacted with iron sulfide in the meteor.
>>>>
>>>> But what the group thinks later spread through the town was not
>>>> disease,
>>>> but
>>>> panic.
>>>>
>>>> "We think it was probably more of a psychological response," Harris
>>>> said, adding
>>>> that commonplace symptoms like headaches and nausea could easily have
>>>> been
>>>> caused by the disorienting impact and then mirrored by frightened
>>>> villagers.
>>>>
>>>> Harris also admitted the possibility of the meteorite releasing arsenic
>>>> deposits, which are known to exist in Peru, but said it would be very
>>>> unlikely
>>>> for those gases to have caused the illness.
>>>>
>>>> "In order to really get arsenic poisoning, you'd need high
>>>> concentrations," he
>>>> said. "You'd have to be there inhaling the vapor filled with the stuff
>>>> right
>>>> after the meteorite hit."
>>>>
>>>> Poisonous or not, the Carancas meteorite could have important
>>>> implications for
>>>> public safety. Tancredi said there's no reason an impact like this
>>>> couldn't
>>>> happen in a major city, wiping out a few city blocks. He also pointed
>>>> out that
>>>> today's most advanced meteor detectors aren't nearly powerful enough to
>>>> detect
>>>> an object as small as the Carancas meteorite.
>>>>
>>>> "Near-Earth detectors detect objects that could create a global
>>>> catastrophe,
>>>> something maybe a kilometer across," he said. "We don't have any kind
>>>> of
>>>> technology that could detect this object before reaching the
>>>> atmosphere,
>>>> so it
>>>> will not be possible to know when and where one of these objects could
>>>> strike
>>>> again."
>>>>
>>>> But Schultz said the most important lesson to learn from Carancas is
>>>> that the
>>>> foundation of good science is hard empirical evidence, even - and
>>>> especially -
>>>> when it contradicts established principle.
>>>>
>>>> "We tried to understand what the rocks told us rather than looking at
>>>> the
>>>> theory," he said. "Nature trumps theory, every time."
>>>> ______________________________________________
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>>
>>
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Received on Fri 04 Apr 2008 07:28:00 PM PDT