[meteorite-list] Tektite fields and rotation

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2008 21:15:57 -0500
Message-ID: <032801c89142$d3955f30$b35ee146_at_ATARIENGINE>

Hi, All,

    Tektites always produce headaches!

    The "fastest" tektites (if they exist) would
achieve orbit or escape the Earth. No strewn
field distribution to worry about in this case...

    Tektites that do not achieve orbit or escape
have a maximum travel time of 45 minutes to
go halfway around the Earth, during which time
the planet turns a hair more than 11 degrees, or
about 800 miles at the equator.

    A tektite that is only chunked a few hundred or
even a few thousand miles spends even less time
in flight and the planet turns less than 11 degrees
during its flight.

    Tektites being chunked east-west are not affected
at all, only tektites being chunked north-south (to
some degree or another).

    Doug & Co. are right about the rotational vector,
but if the tektite was chunked off the equator, it
has a latitudinal vector velocity of 1040 mph. If
it then comes down at a much higher latitude where
the latitudinal vector velocity is only a few hundred
miles an hour, it will appear, to the local observer, to
be heading west like a bat out of supersonic hell.

    Conversely, if the tektite was chunked off at high
latitude, like Greenland, it will have a latitudinal
vector velocity of only a few hundred miles an
hour. If it then comes down at the equator, it will
appear, to the local observer, to be heading east
like a bat out of supersonic hell.

    If the tektites come, for example, to high latitudes
from the equator, every minute's delay in flight will
displace it 12 miles or so. And in the reverse case,
each minute will displace it 12 miles or so in the
other direction. Atmospheric forces probably
overwhelm these effects in practice.

    These are very small displacements in a strewn
field covering hundreds to thousands of miles! And
an impact's distribution is a statistically random event,
although many theories hold it is also dependent on
the composition of the target material.

    In the case of Goren's cannonball shot -- straight
up! -- this angle of flight is statistically unlikely and
wouldn't apply to too many tektites, and -- if it was
fast enough -- it wouldn't come down at all! [Please,
all List Members visiting other planets, keep an eye
out for tektites, whether local or "imported."]

    Utilizing the latitudinal vector velocity in spaceflight
is why we launch Shuttles in Florida instead of Maine,
why eventually the upland plateau of New Guinea will,
in a few centuries, become the spaceport of the world
(10,000 feet up and 5 degrees from the equator), or
so says Arthur C. Clarke.

    It's All Relative, in the Galilean sense, but not the other
sense. No matter how fast I peddle my bicycle at night,
I will never catch up with the light from my headlamp...

    The Australasian strewn field looks like an (asymmetrical)
strewn field, but others do not. The majority of bediasites
have been found in a strip 5 miles by 140 miles; is that a
strewn field? Or just the exposure of the strata that contains
the strewnfield? Personally, I believe the Eocene strewnfield
covers two-thirds+ of North America. Every time I go for a
walk I like to picture that somewhere under my feet there
either is or once was an array of glassy golfballs extending
for hundreds of miles in every direction.

    Of course, if you belong to the "squirted jet" theory of
tektites, then I'm wasting my time keeping an eye out for
them.


Sterling K. Webb
--------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "E.P. Grondine" <epgrondine at yahoo.com>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Friday, March 28, 2008 12:57 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Tektite fields and rotation


Hi all -

I wonder what effect the rotation of the Earth plays
in the distribution of the tektites from their impact
crater. Their trip must take some time, and the Earth
must rotate under them during that time.

Any ideas?

good hunting,
E.P. Grondine
Man and Impact in the Americas


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Received on Fri 28 Mar 2008 10:15:57 PM PDT