[meteorite-list] How much survives entry?

From: Richard Kowalski <damoclid_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 4 Dec 2009 12:42:22 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <43699.47901.qm_at_web33903.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Sorry for my poorly formed query.
I certainly did not mean that we'd include meteoroids that were so small that they completely burned up before becoming meteorites on the surface. I figured that was a given.

My mistake.

Yes and I did try to be a bit subtle in my query and ask about an ordinary chondrite instead of an Ureilite just to make the back of the envelope calculations easier. I am assuming someone somewhere has tested actual chondritic material in a hypersonic plasma tunnel to measure the exact amount of ablation and possibly someone here knew that result. That way it wouldn't be a guess but an actual measurement. Now that I've thought about it some more I know someone who may have already performed that experiment, so I'll contact him...

Too me, 99.9% seems to me to be an excessive amount of loss due to ablation and disintegration, but maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, even if you use that number, with 2008 TC3 "weighing" an estimated 72,600 kilos before entry. 99.9% loss would mean there is still about 65 kilos of material on the ground in the Sudan that has not yet been recovered.

--
Richard Kowalski
http://fullmoonphotography.net
IMCA #1081
      

Received on Fri 04 Dec 2009 03:42:22 PM PST